Other forms: plazas
A plaza is an open public square in a town. The main plaza, cross the plaza, a shaded plaza.
Spanish and Latin American towns are built around one, with the church and the town hall on it, and the plaza is where the social life of the place actually happens. In America the word also names a shopping centre. Note piazza and place, which are the same Latin word arriving by other routes.
1nounplazaAn open public square in a town.
“People gathered in the plaza in the evening to eat ice cream and watch street performers.”
plaza is a public square.
Spanish plaza comes from Latin platea, a broad street, from Greek plateia. Piazza, place and platz are the same word.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleth₂-
Spanish
plaza
English, today
plaza
Built from
Borrowed from Spanish plaza. Spanish plaza (“town-square or central place of gathering”), from Latin platea, from Ancient Greek πλατεῖα, clipping of πλατεῖα ὁδός (“broad way”). a doublet of piatza and piazza and place and platz.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA