zócalo

From Latin socculus, diminutive of soccus (“slipper”).

• IPA^(key): (Spain) /ˈθokalo/
• IPA^(key): (Latin America, Philippines) /ˈsokalo/
• Rhymes: -okalo
• Syllabification: zó‧ca‧lo

zócalo m (plural zócalos)

1. (architecture) plinth, socle, base (a block or slab upon which a column, pedestal, statue or other structure is based)

   Synonyms: base, pedestal, plinto, zoco

   • 1898, Benito Pérez Galdós, “18”, in Mendizábal:

     En el zócalo de la columnita que habrán ustedes visto en el país, a la derecha, pusieron los artistas la divisa de la cortesana, que dice: virtus in arduis.

     At the base of the little column that you will have seen in the country, on the right, the artists put the courtier's emblem, which says: virtus in arduis.

2. (architecture) baseboard, footing, skirting, skirting board; frieze

   Synonyms: friso, rodapié

   • 1913, Abraham Valdelomar, chapter 7, in Tres senas, dos ases:

     En el comedorcito, cuyo zócalo de caoba circunda la menuda habitación, bajo el gran quinqué de ópalo, estarán las flores, y alrededor de ellas, sobre un blanco mantel, las viandas confeccionadas por Hellen.

     In the little dining room, whose mahogany baseboard encircles the small room, under the great opal oil lamp, there will be flowers, and around them, on a white tablecloth, the food prepared by Hellen.

3. (chiefly Mexico City) public square, town square, plaza, zocalo

   Synonym: plaza

   • 2016 December 14, Sabina Berman, “El pueblo tiene la culpa”, in El Universal‎:

     ¿No leen cómo en Corea del Sur los ciudadanos sí pararon la corrupción? Se fueron todos, todos, cada domingo al zócalo de su ciudad o de su pueblo, y se quedaron ahí, cada domingo, durante un mes, y no sólo tuvo que dimitir el procurador de Justicia corrupto, la misma presidenta dimitió.

     Don't you read how in South Korea citizens did stop corruption? Everyone, everyone went out, every Sunday to the town square of their city or their village, and they stayed there, every Sunday, for a month, and not only did the corrupt Minister of Justice have to resign, the president herself resigned.

4. (geology) basement, shelf (mass of rock underlying sedimentary cover)
5. (computing) One endpoint of a two-way connection used for interprocess communication
   • 2022, Arturo Enrique Mata Garcia, Curso de programación Bash Shell‎, Ra-Ma Editorial, →ISBN, page 63:

     También podemos combinar el parámetro -I, que, como hemos visto el zócalo, con los parámetros -t y -u para mostrar nuestras conexiones TCP o UDP.

     We can also combine the -I parameter, which, as we have seen, is the socket, with the -t and -u parameters to display our TCP or UDP connections.

6. (computing) A type of mechanical connector inside a computer that allows various components to be installed without the need for soldering
   • 2015, Silvia Clara Menéndez Arantes, Montage de componentes y periféricos microinformáticos UF0465‎, Editorial Elearning, page 150:

     La placa base dispone de un zócalo para insertar la CPU, cada CPU tiene un zócalo diferente, así no es lo mismo un zócalo para un Pentium I que para un AMD Phenom o un 17 De Intel.

     The motherboard has a socket for inserting the CPU, each CPU has a different socket, so a socket for a Pentium I is not the same as for an AMD Phenom or an Intel 17.

• → English: zocalo

• “zócalo”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 2024 December 10