A toreador is a man who fights bulls in front of a crowd in Spain, as a show. He wears a bright, tight suit covered in gold or silver thread, and he waves a cloth to make the bull run at him. Here is the thing to know, though: this is not really the Spanish word. In Spain the word people use is *torero*. *Toreador* is an old form that Spanish itself mostly dropped, but English kept it — mainly because of a famous song in the opera *Carmen*, the one everybody can hum. So an English speaker hears *toreador* and thinks of that song, of red cloth, of something grand and old-fashioned and a bit romantic. A Spanish speaker may find it odd, the way it would sound odd if a foreigner called Taiwan by a name we stopped using long ago. Because of that, you will meet *toreador* far more often in music, in books, in jokes, and on restaurant menus than in real reporting about Spain. A news story today will say *bullfighter* or *matador*. And *matador* is not simply the same word: the matador is the main one, the one who ends the fight, while other men on foot and on horseback help him earlier on. *Toreador* is loose and covers any of them. People also use it playfully. If a friend steps aside neatly to avoid someone rushing past, you might say he did a little toreador move. That is a joke, not a real use, and everyone hears it as a joke. One more thing worth saying, since your students may ask: bullfighting is a real argument in Spain today, loved by some as an old art and hated by others as cruelty to an animal. The English word carries a shine on it that the modern debate does not.

鬥牛士。注意西班牙人自己講的是 torero，toreador 是英文（因為歌劇《卡門》）留下來的舊講法。matador 專指最後刺殺公牛的那位主角，範圍比較窄。