plaza
Americannoun
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plazas
plural
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a public square or open space in a city or town.
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an area along an expressway where public facilities, as service stations and restrooms, are available.
noun
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an open space or square, esp in Spain or a Spanish-speaking country
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a modern complex of shops, buildings, and parking areas
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( capital when part of a name )
Rockefeller Plaza
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Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of plaza
First recorded in 1675–85; from Spanish, from Latin platea “street,” from Greek plateîa “broad street”; see place
Explanation
A plaza is an urban park or square, or another public space where people can walk, sit, and congregate. You might, for example, tell your friend to meet you in the plaza downtown with the big horse statue. There are plazas that are mainly open spaces for pedestrians, sometimes including statues, fountains, and benches, like Washington DC's Freedom Plaza or Union Square in New York. Other plazas are more commercial, offering room to stroll and sit but also stores and restaurants. In Spanish, plaza simply means "place," and the earliest plazas were built in Spanish colonies in South America and the East Indies.
Vocabulary lists containing plaza
Mexico - Introductory
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Mexico - Middle School
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Mexico - High School
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The address then shifted to a box in a suburban Atlanta shopping plaza, but other customers’ mail was returned.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 11, 2026
Price’s rendition of “De Colores” sounds and feels like you’re standing in a sun-drenched plaza.
From Salon ● Jul. 14, 2026
She now sleeps in a plaza near where he worked.
From Barron's ● Jul. 5, 2026
"We're all pretty frustrated because the government is not showing what it should – a serious display of help," she says in a plaza just a block away from two collapsed buildings.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2026
We walk down the sidewalk toward the plaza.
From "Marcus Vega Doesn't Speak Spanish" by Pablo Cartaya
Camps for families left homeless have sprung up in stadiums, plazas and on sidewalks.
From Barron's ● Jul. 11, 2026
Elders get their hearing checked and play mahjongg and practice calligraphy in the shade of empty plazas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2026
On one of the city’s tree-lined plazas, Lia Mashaka runs a business helping Americans move to the Mediterranean city, from navigating visas to finding a pediatrician.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 26, 2026
As news of his seizure rippled out, exiled Venezuelans waved flags and celebrated in plazas from Madrid to Santiago.
From Barron's ● Jan. 4, 2026
As with Gothic churches, which had plazas for the outdoor performance of sacred mystery plays, the mounds had greens before them: ritual spaces for public use.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
