The sharp discomfort of witnessing someone else's social awkwardness—secondhand embarrassment as a distinct emotional state requiring its own word.
Roche is the specific discomfort you feel when social awkwardness happens—not your own embarrassment, but the sharp awareness of someone else's. It's watching someone tell a joke that lands wrong, witnessing a public argument, seeing someone dressed completely out of place. The feeling sits between empathy and alarm: you're uncomfortable because they should be, whether they realize it or not.
The word emerged in Lima during the 1980s and 1990s, spreading through youth speech as they navigated Peru's layered social codes. By 2024, it had penetrated deep enough into consciousness that Peru's adaptation of the teen drama SKAM took it as its title—Roche PE—trusting one word could capture the entire adolescent experience of social vulnerability.
What makes roche distinctly Peruvian is that it needed to exist at all. Having a precise term for secondhand embarrassment suggests a culture where social harmony matters deeply, where people are constantly reading situations for potential discomfort. It's the linguistic footprint of a society that values not just avoiding your own mistakes, but being alert to the social tensions around you—a citizenship test in sensitivity to collective comfort.