It’s that time of the week when we seek to get the measure of two more similar-looking Spanish nouns and how they are used. These are palma (feminine) and palmo (masculine).
Of the two, palma, the feminine one, is likely to be more useful. Listen to how it’s pronounced here:
Your palma is the inside part of your hand, your palm:
La besó en la palma.
He kissed her palm.
Diana le puso el dinero en la palma.
Diana placed the money in the palm of his hand.
Todo el mundo batió sus palmas enérgicamente.
Everyone clapped their hands enthusiastically.
Una palma can also be the same as una palmera, a palm tree. That might be un cocotero, a coconut palm,or una datilera, a date palm, for example.
Es una palma.
It’s a palm tree.
Una palma is also a palm leaf:
Las calles se adornaban con arcos de ramas verdes y palmas de cocotero.
The streets were decorated with arches made of greenery and coconut palm leaves.
In the plural, because of the sound you make when bringing your palms together repeatedly, palmas can also mean clapping or applause:
el sonido de las palmas
the sound of the clapping or applause
And tocar las palmas means to clap in time:
Los niños cantaban y tocaban las palmas.
The children sang and clapped in time.
Moving on to the masculine, you can listen to the pronunciation of palmo here:
Un palmo is a traditional body-based unit of measurement. If you spread your hand wide, un palmo is the distance from the tip of your thumb to the tip of your little finger, and it’s about 20 cm:
No pudo comprender lo que era, aunque estaba puesto delante de ella, a un palmo de su cara.
She couldn’t understand what it was, even though it was right in front of her, less than a foot from her face.
Join us again next week as we continue gauging the differences between pairs of similar-looking Spanish nouns.
