Etymologically
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plateau

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Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈplætəʊ/[1]
  • US: /plæˈtoʊ/[1]

Etymology

It is borrowed from French plateau,[2][3][4][5][6] partly the French word for a tract of flat land, used in military language from 1718 for level ground where troops can be deployed and in general geography from 1796, and partly its homonym meaning a flat dish or tray.[2] The older form was Old French platel (“flat piece of metal or wood; platter”), recorded from the 12th or 13th century,[3][2] a diminutive of plat (“flat surface or thing”), the noun use of the adjective meaning "flat, stretched out".[3][4][7][6] Etymonline derives that adjective, perhaps, from Vulgar Latin *plattus, from or modelled on Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús, “flat, wide, broad”), from Proto-Indo-European *plat- (“to spread”).[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

An elevated tract of fairly level land, a tableland: 1743, in an English translation of an account of the siege of Prague.[2] Etymonline and Barnhart date it to 1796,[3][4] Dictionary.com to 1785–95,[8] and the Shorter Oxford to the late 18th century.[9]

Semantic evolution

From the dish sense came "an ornamental tray or flat dish", recorded from 1790 in a letter of G. Morris,[2][10] and briefly "a decorative plaque" (1861).[2] A woman's hat with a flat crown was a plateau from 1890.[2][10] The figurative uses began with graphs: a level stretch of a curve after a rising one, from 1894;[2][4] then, from 1897, in the psychology of learning, a stage at which no progress is apparent;[2][3] hence any period of little or no change after growth.[2][4] Physicists used it from 1937 for the voltage range over which a Geiger counter counts steadily, and sexologists for a phase of arousal, from 1960 according to Etymonline and 1974 in the OED.[2][3] The OED notes that the hat and the figurative senses have no French parallel until the 20th century.[2] The verb, "to level off", is from 1951 in the OED,[2] 1952 in Etymonline and Barnhart,[3][4] and 1939 in Merriam-Webster.[10]

Timeline

  • 1743 – an elevated tract of level land.[2]
  • 1790 – an ornamental tray or flat dish.[2]
  • 1890 – a hat with a flat crown.[2]
  • 1894 – a level part of a graph.[2][4]
  • 1897 – a stage of no apparent progress, in psychology.[2][3]
  • 1923 – adjective, in medicine, of the pulse.[2]
  • 1937 – in physics, of a Geiger counter.[2]
  • 1951 – verb, to level off.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A wide, mainly level area of high land; a tableland.[11][10][2]
  2. A period or state of little or no change after a time of growth or progress: Sales reached a plateau in the spring.[11][2]
  3. A level part of a graph after a rising one.[2]
  4. An ornamental tray or flat dish.[10][2]
  5. A woman's hat with a flat crown.[10][2]

Verb

  1. To reach a level and stop rising or progressing; to level off: Her running times plateaued after a month.[11][10][2][9]

Usage notes

The plural is plateaus or, after French, plateaux.[11][10][2] Plateau's problem in mathematics, finding the surface of least area bounded by a given closed curve, is named after the Belgian physicist J. A. F. Plateau (1801–83).[2][9]

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ 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 27 28 29 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  6. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  8. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  9. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  10. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  11. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins