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What does “meter la pata” mean in Spanish?

Meter la pata means to mess up, say the wrong thing, or blow it — the Spanish cousin of “put your foot in it.” Meter is “to put in” and la pata is “the paw,” an animal’s foot, not a person’s — the image is of a clumsy creature stepping where it shouldn’t. On MasterChef España, a contestant sums up her burnt rice dish with exactly this line: he metido la pata, “I’ve messed up.”

The leading theory traces it to hunting: an animal that puts its paw in a trap gets caught, and that image of a costly misstep carried over into everyday speech. A competing theory links it to mentar a Pateta (“to mention Pateta,” an old regional nickname for the devil), which some say slurred over time into meter la pata — invoking a mistake so bad it was like summoning trouble.