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plaza

noun

Simple meaning

A public square with room for pedestrians.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

plahzuh

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈplɑzə

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. A public square with room for pedestrians

  2. A town's public square.

  3. An open area used for gathering in a city, often having small trees and sitting benches.

  4. A shopping mall.

  5. canadaus

    A strip mall.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: A public square with room for pedestrians

Used this way, plaza is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use plaza

  • “A good plaza should have a movie house.”noun
  • “They met at Elm Plaza.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

plaza accordplaza hotelcentral plazamain plazaplaza mayorpark plazagreat plazacenter plaza

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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?

Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.

  • piazza

    A public square with room for pedestrians.

  • mall

    A public area set aside as a pedestrian walk.

  • place

    A street, sometimes but not always surrounding a public place, square, or plaza of the same name.

Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • toll plazanounCompound term

    An area where tollbooths are located.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: public square with room for pedestrians

placepiazza

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.