Plates

How to spell plates

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce plates

What does plates mean?

1. nounFlat dishes from which food is eaten or on which it is served.
2. nounThin, flat, rigid pieces of metal, glass, or another solid material.

Plates in a sentence

• She stacked the dinner plates neatly in the cupboard.

• The engineers welded the steel plates onto the hull.

• The waiter cleared the empty plates from our table.

• Geologists study how the earth's tectonic plates shift over time.

Where does plates come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word goes back to the Greek platus, meaning 'flat' or 'broad', which passed into Latin and the Vulgar Latin form platta, used for a flat sheet of metal. It entered English through Old French plate during the 1200s, at first describing a thin flat piece of metal, including the armour plates worn by knights. The familiar 'dish' meaning arose because early eating plates were broad, flat surfaces of metal, wood, or pottery. The same flat root spread widely: it sits inside 'plateau', 'platform', and even 'platypus' (literally 'flat foot'). The plural is regular, simply adding -s, so the only thing to remember is the single t before the silent final e.

How the word is built

• plate (from Greek platus: flat, broad)
• -s (plural)