Platform

How to spell platform

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce platform

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does platform mean?

1. nounA raised, flat structure or surface on which people stand or things are placed.
2. nounThe raised area beside a railway track where passengers board and leave trains.
3. nounA piece of software or hardware on which other applications or services are built and run.
4. nounThe declared set of principles and policies on which a political party or candidate campaigns.

Platform in a sentence

• The speaker climbed onto the wooden platform to address the crowd.

• The train to Manchester departs from platform four.

• The company moved its accounting to a cloud-based platform last year.

• The candidate built her election platform around lower taxes and better schools.

• Workers built a temporary platform so they could reach the high windows.

• She waited on a crowded platform as the delayed service finally arrived.

Where does platform come from?

Language of origin: French

This word comes from the French plateforme, a compound that combined plat, meaning 'flat', with forme, meaning 'shape' or 'plan'. The literal sense was therefore something like 'flat shape' or 'ground plan', and in the 1500s it could describe a sketch, a diagram, or a level expanse of ground. English borrowed it in that century, and the meaning soon settled on a raised, level surface that people could stand on. From the idea of standing up to be seen and heard came the political sense: the 'platform' of statements a party stands on, first recorded in American usage in the 1800s. The flat in plat- is the same root behind 'plate' and 'plateau', which is a useful clue that the word has only one t after the a.

How the word is built

• plat- (flat, from French plat)
• -form (shape, from Latin forma)