What does “mirilla” mean in Spanish?
Historia de terror: la mirilla y el timbre
B1 Spanish listening practice · Spanish from Spain · Picked for people who know some
In this animated horror story, a girl checks who’s at the door late at night by looking through the mirilla — the peephole set into her front door — and what she sees through it drives the whole story. Mirilla comes from mira (“sight/view”), itself from the verb mirar, “to look,” with the diminutive -illa shrinking it to “little viewing spot” — the everyday word for the fisheye lens on any Spanish door.
The diminutive -illa/-illo is a productive pattern worth noticing elsewhere: ventana (window) → ventanilla (a small window, like a ticket counter’s), puerta (door) → portilla (a small gate or hatch). In the story, the girl looks through the mirilla twice before deciding whether to open the door — the peephole is both her only source of information and the thing that finally warns her not to trust what she’s seeing.
How common are the words?
How common are the words in this B1 Spanish listening practice video?
How common in written Spanish
How common in spoken Spanish
Harder words in this video
These words are harder than B1. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.