Reporte vial y choque de Metrobús en La Merced
B1 Spanish listening practice · Mexican Spanish · Curated for intermediate learners
What does “socavón” mean in Spanish?
A socavón is a sinkhole: the ground giving way to leave a crater, usually under a road. The word is built from the verb socavar — to dig away at, to undermine — plus the augmentative -ón, so it names the big hollow that gets dug out from below. It is the headline word every time a street collapses, and it carries a faint sense of something eaten away from underneath.
Socavar works figuratively too: water can socavar a foundation, and rumors can socavar someone’s authority. So the noun socavón quietly tells you what happened — something was undermined until it caved. Spanish has bache for a small pothole, but a socavón is the dramatic, swallow-a-car kind, and it dominates Mexican and Latin American news whenever a burst water main opens the asphalt.
Vocabulary frequency
How common is the vocabulary in this B1 Spanish listening practice listening practice?
General Spanish frequency
Spoken Spanish frequency
Words above this video’s level
Quick glosses for vocabulary that goes beyond this video’s B1 level.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). Buckets approximate; exact ranks not stored.