Ubicar

Ubicar, meaning locate, is one of those fairly common Spanish words that took me a while to notice. Here's how to use it.

¿Lo ubicas?

Imagine you want to gossip with your roommate about a mutual acquaintance. You say: Remember that guy from the party, the one who wants to move to Germany? But before going on with your story, you want to know if your roommate has figured out which guy you mean, or whether you need to provide more details to jog his memory. So you ask, ¿Lo ubicas? = Do you know who I'm talking about? = Can you place him, given the context so far?

Note that ¿Lo ubicas? does not mean ¿Lo conoces? This latter question would be understood as inquiring about whether your roommate had ever met the acquaintance, not whether he knows who you are talking about. —Do you know the place I'm talking about? —Yeah, but I've never been there. No lo conozco pero sí lo ubico.

Más o menos lo ubico = I kind of know who you are talking about.

The entity in question doesn't have to be a person. It could be a movie, a book, a city, whatever. ¿Ubicas El Señor de los Anillos? = Have you heard of The Lord of the Rings? It's easier and more natural to use ubicar here than to say something convoluted like ¿Sabes de qué película estoy hablando? An alternative is ¿Te suena? = Does that ring a bell, sound familiar?

No me ubico

No me ubico is a handy way to say that you're lost, that you don't know where you are. You could be talking on your cell/mobile, saying that you don't recognize any landmarks. Or you could say it to indicate that you've lost of the thread of someone's complicated story.

Ubicación, paradero

Una excelente ubicación means a great location, although this idea is often expressed with the adjective ubicado: Está súper bien ubicado tu depa, eh. Your apartment has a great location. When talking about people, the formal word paradero is possible: Desafortunadamente no sabemos de su paradero. His location is unknown right now.