arar

The straightforward agricultural verb for plowing land, with a tractor or, traditionally, oxen — a workhorse verb of rural life that also shows up in the well-known proverb about false credit for someone else's labor.

• El campesino ara la tierra antes de sembrar. — The farmer plows the land before sowing.
• Antes se araba con bueyes, ahora con tractores. — In the past people plowed with oxen, now with tractors.
• Araron todo el campo en un solo día. — They plowed the whole field in a single day.

Confusing arar (to plow, turning over soil before planting) with sembrar (to sow, planting the seeds themselves) — they're sequential steps in farming, not synonyms, and mixing them up gets the order of the work backward.

Often confused with sembrar.

• expression Aramos, dijo la mosca al buey — A well-known Spanish-language proverb from an old fable: a fly rides on an ox's horns while the ox plows all day, then boasts "we plowed!" — used to mock someone claiming credit for work they didn't actually do.