Plated

How to spell plated

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce plated

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does plated mean?

1. adjectiveCovered with a thin layer of metal such as gold, silver, or chrome.
2. adjectiveProtected or reinforced with rigid plates, especially of metal.

Plated in a sentence

• The ring turned out to be gold plated rather than solid gold.

• The museum displays a heavily plated medieval suit of armour.

• The cheaper cutlery is silver plated over a base metal.

• The armoured car has a plated underside to resist blasts.

Where does plated come from?

Language of origin: French

This word is the past form of the verb 'plate', which itself comes from the noun 'plate', borrowed into English in the 1200s from Old French 'plate', meaning a thin, flat piece of metal. That Old French word traces back to Medieval Latin 'plata', a sheet or slab of metal, which grew from the Vulgar Latin adjective 'plattus' meaning 'flat'. The deeper ancestor is the Greek 'platys', meaning 'flat' or 'broad', a root that also gave us 'plateau' and the wide flat dish we still call a 'plate'. The metalworking sense developed naturally: to 'plate' something was to cover it with a thin sheet or coating of metal, and 'plated' described the finished result. Because the base word ends in a silent 'e', the spelling keeps a single 't' before the ending, which is the small trap that separates it from words like 'platted'.

How the word is built

• plate (thin sheet of metal)
• -ed (past/adjective suffix)