Palate

How to spell palate

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce palate

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does palate mean?

1. nounThe roof of the mouth, made up of a bony hard section at the front and a soft section at the back.
2. nounA person's ability to appreciate and distinguish flavours, or their preference in food and drink.

Palate in a sentence

• The dentist examined the roof of her mouth and noted a small sore on the palate.

• The chef designed the menu to suit a refined palate.

• Hot coffee can burn the soft tissue of the palate.

• Years of tasting wine had trained his palate to detect subtle notes.

Where does palate come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes directly from the Latin palatum, the term for the roof of the mouth. The Romans also used palatum in a figurative way to mean the sense of taste, since the mouth was thought to be where flavour was judged, and English inherited both meanings together. It entered English in the late 1300s through medical and scientific writing, keeping the Latin spelling almost untouched. The trap for modern writers is the cluster of look-alikes it keeps: palette, the artist's board of colours, comes from French, and pallet, a platform or crude bed, comes from a different French root meaning 'straw'. All three sound the same, but only palate, with its plain -ate ending, refers to the mouth or to a person's taste in food and drink.

How the word is built

• palat- (from Latin palatum: roof of the mouth)
• -e

Words that sound like palate

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• palette: A thin board, often oval, on which a painter lays out and mixes colours.
• pallet: A flat wooden or plastic platform on which goods are stacked for storage and moving by forklift.