Carlitos va al parque con su familia

Does “perezoso” mean lazy or sloth in Spanish?

Perezoso is the everyday word for “lazy”: un niño perezoso is a lazy child. But it is also the name of the animal the sloth, because the sloth moves so slowly it looks lazy. So one word covers both the feeling and the animal. As an adjective it changes ending to match: perezoso for a boy, perezosa for a girl.

In the story little Carlitos climbs a tree and announces soy un perezoso, “I’m a sloth / I’m a lazy one”, playing on both meanings while hanging up there. The full name for the animal is sometimes oso perezoso, which literally means “lazy bear”.