palate

Etymology

It is inherited from Middle English palat, also palet,^[2][3] borrowed from Latin palātum (“roof of the mouth, palate; sense of taste”),^{[4][5][6][7][8]} and partly also borrowed from Old French palat.^{[9][2][10][11]} The modern spelling restores the Latin one.^[12] The origin of the Latin word is unknown.^[4][13] It is perhaps related to Etruscan falandum (“sky”),^{[4][11][10][7]} compare Latin caelī palātum (“the vault of heaven”),^[11][9] but de Vaan suggests an adjective from a root meaning "flat, broad", Proto-Indo-European *pl̥h₂- (“flat, wide”), comparing Hittite palhi- (“broad”);^[14][9] Partridge thought it perhaps akin to pāla (“shovel”).^[15] De Vaan also thinks that the Palatine hill, Palātium, may have been named from it.^[14]

Earliest recorded meaning

The roof of the mouth: before 1382, in the early version of the Wycliffite Bible,^[4][2] where the tongue of the thirsty child cleaves to its palat in Lamentations 4:4.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The palate was popularly considered the seat of taste, so the word soon also meant the sense of taste itself, before 1398 in John Trevisa,^[4][2][9] a sense that classical Latin already had.^[9][4] Post-classical Latin, in Augustine, extended it to mental or spiritual taste,^[4] and English followed in 1435, in Richard Misyn's translation of Richard Rolle.^[4] Johnson (1755) defined it first as "the instrument of taste".^[16] The palate of an animal, especially a bullock, was sold as food from 1655.^[4] Botanists, following the Latin of Dillenius, Tournefort and Linnaeus, used it in 1760 for the swelling on the lower lip of flowers such as the snapdragon,^[4] and zoologists in 1867 for a mouthpart of insects and other invertebrates.^[4] Its use for the flavour of a wine or beer dates only from the 1970s.^[17][4] The verb, to taste or relish, first appears in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (1609).^[4]

Timeline

• before 1382 – palet, the roof of the mouth.^[4][2]
• before 1398 – the sense of taste.^[4][2]
• 1435 – mental taste or liking.^[4]
• 1609 – verb, to taste, relish.^[4]
• 1655 – an animal's palate as food.^[4]
• 1760 – in botany, the swelling on the lower lip of some two-lipped flowers.^[4]
• 1973 – the flavour of a wine or beer.^[4][17]

Meanings

Noun

1. The roof of the mouth, which separates the mouth from the nasal cavity; it consists of the bony hard palate in front and the fleshy soft palate behind.^[18][7][4]
2. The sense of taste, especially the ability to judge food and drink: a chef with a fine palate.^[18][7][4]
3. A liking or relish; intellectual taste: She had no palate for long novels.^[18][7][4]
4. The flavour of a wine or beer as it is tasted.^[4]
5. (botany) In some two-lipped flowers, a raised part of the lower lip that closes the throat of the corolla.^[18][7][4]

Verb

1. (rare) To taste or savour.^[7][4]

Word family

• palateless
• palatelike
• palatal
• palatable
• cleft palate

Related words

• palatine
• palette
• pallet

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b Stratmann, Francis Henry (1891), A Middle-English Dictionary, revised by Henry Bradley, Oxford: Clarendon Press
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
9. ^ a b c d e Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
10. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
12. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
13. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
15. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
18. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins