Our task today is to square up to two more similar-looking Spanish nouns and to identify the commonest uses of each: these are cuadro (masculine) and cuadra (feminine).
You can listen to the pronunciation of cuadro here:
Un cuadro (masculine) commonly refers to a painting or a picture, an often framed piece of art, whether an original work or a reproduction:
un cuadro de Picasso
a painting by Picasso
En un rincón del cuadro se veían un nombre y una fecha.
In one corner of the painting could be seen a name and a date.
En aquel cuadro había un hombre, con la mano levantada.
In that picture there was a man, with his hand raised.
In another sense, un cuadro may be a square, and cuadros a checked pattern:
dos cuadros color rosa y dos celestes
two pink squares and two sky-blue ones
un delantal de cuadros azules
an apron with a blue check pattern
Viste una camiseta amarilla y una falda roja a cuadros.
She’s wearing a yellow T-shirt and a red checked skirt.
una camisa de cuadros escoceses
a tartan shirt
Un cuadro can also be a table (in the graphic sense), a box or a chart:
Como se ve en el cuadro…
As you can see in the table…
Véase cuadro 29.
See table 29.
En este cuadro se observa una línea progresivamente ascendente.
In this chart you can see a line mounting progressively.
El cuadro can also be the frame of a bicycle:
un cuadro de bicicleta de aluminio y fibra de carbono
a bike frame made of aluminium and carbon fibre
Moving on to cuadra, you can listen to its pronunciation here:
Una cuadra (feminine) can be a stable(s), as in a building in which horses are kept, or an establishment dedicated to horses, particularly racehorses:
Habían sacado el caballo de la cuadra.
They had brought the horse out of the stable.
Es dueño de una cuadra de 15 caballos.
He’s the owner of a stables with 15 horses.
los propietarios de las cuadras más importantes del mundo
the owners of the most important stables in the world
In Latin America, una cuadra (feminine) can also be a block, as in a line of buildings bounded by streets (equivalent in European Spanish to una manzana):
Vive a dos cuadras de su oficina.
She lives two blocks away from her office.
a pocas cuadras de su casa
not many blocks from their house
Join us again next week as we continue charting the differences between some other similar-looking nouns with very different meanings.
