Platter

How to spell platter

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce platter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does platter mean?

1. nounA large flat dish used for serving food.

Platter in a sentence

• The waiter set a steaming platter of roast lamb on the table.

• She arranged the cheese and crackers on a wooden platter.

Where does platter come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from the Anglo-Norman and Old French plater or plate, meaning a large flat dish, which itself rests on the Old French adjective plat, meaning 'flat'. That adjective traces back through Vulgar Latin to a Greek root, platus, meaning 'broad' or 'flat', the same source that gives us 'plate' and the broad public square called a 'plaza' or 'place'. English adopted platter in the 1300s specifically for the big shallow dish used to serve meat and other food at table. The doubled 't' in the modern spelling reflects the short, stressed first vowel, and it is the part of the word that most often trips writers, who may be tempted to write a single 't'. Knowing that 'plate' and 'platter' share the same flat-and-broad ancestry helps fix the connection in mind.

How the word is built

• platt- (from Old French plat: a flat dish)
• -er (noun suffix denoting an object)