This is the 5870th most frequent Spanish word.
tapones
Plugs or stoppers.
Here, 'tapones' indicates sink stoppers, which are used to seal the drain.
Cambié los tapones del fregadero porque estaban gastados.
I replaced the sink stoppers because they were worn out.
In this case, 'tapones' refers metaphorically to bottlenecks or congested spots in traffic.
El tráfico en la ciudad tiene muchos tapones.
The traffic in the city has many bottlenecks.
In this sentence, 'tapones' refers to earplugs, objects used to block out sound.