Palabra Plaza / Plaza de Palabras

A topic rarely touched in books for learning Spanish is the difference between ya no and todava no. When you mean still don't (as in I stilll don't have the money you owe me, say todavia no. When you mean no longer, use ya no.
I think I'm finally going to remember that prescindible means essential.

From the sports page but used other places too: hazan(y)a meaning feat. (I can't put the ~ sign above the n on this computer.)

Decepcionar comes up now and again. It generally means to disappoint, not to deceive.

Two words from El Pais (Madrid) Segu'n las distintas fuentes, durante el ene'simo ataque... Distintas means different/various, not distinct meaning clear. Ene'simo means too many to specify.

FMI, UNO, and OTAN appear frequently in headlines. They are, respectively, the IMF, the UN, and NATO. UE stands for the European Union, not a hybrid of the United States/los Estados Unidos, which is written as EEUU.

During this rainy season, the verb desfogar and noun el desfogue aare in the headlines. Hard to find in a dictionary, it means to open the floodgates (say, of a reservoir). Desfogue (m) del la Solis provoco' el desbordimento del ri'o Lerma. Desbordamiento here means flooding, flood.

Headline in El Pais of Madrid: Rocio reconoce que tiene cancer
Reconocer can mean recognize but here it means acknowledge as the singer did in a press conference last week. She will go to Houston, where her son is studying, for further treatment.

Headline in El Correo: Clinton abandona el hospital
Clearly, he was not abandoning it in the English sense. An interesting example of
words with a common root taking different paths. When Clinton entered the hospital, the phrase used was probably esta' internado, another root we use differently, for example, in referring to the Japanese- American internment camps during World War II.

Another headline: "Ivan" se acerca a Jamaica, Cuba se previene. Here, prevenir has nothing to do with prevent (except indirectly); the meaning of se previene is prepares. More about Ivan: Ivan sigue azotando Florida, Ivan beats down on Florida. Related to azotea, roof (that which takes a beating from the rain).