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plato

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Etymology and origin of the Spanish word plato

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
c. 1400 the Escorial glossaries More words from the 14th century
Inherited from
Latin *plattus
Ultimate origin
Proto-Indo-European *pléth₂us
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús)
Spanish plato
From the same root
Ancient Greek πλατεῖα (plateîa) ← πλατύς

Pronunciation

  • /ˈplato/, [ˈpla.t̪o][1]

Forms

plato m (plural platos)[1]

Etymology

It continues inherited from Vulgar Latin *plattus (“flat, flattened”), an adjective used as a noun, which is from Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús, “broad, flat”).[2][3][1] Corominas treats the word with chato “flat-nosed”, the popular outcome of the same Vulgar Latin adjective, and explains that the Romance forms require a Vulgar Latin form with a double /t/ as an expressive, intensive gemination of the Greek loan.[4]

The initial /pl/ was not turned into /tʃ/ as in that word: Corominas sees here not a learned form but the pronunciation of the upper classes, who ate from plates, while the common people made do with bowls.[4] Wiktionary calls the word semi-learned or a word of the upper classes for the same reason.[1] Meyer-Lübke instead derived the noun from French plat, as Cunha does for Portuguese prato.[5][6] The same noun is Catalan plat and Italian piatto, and the feminine of the adjective gave plata “silver”.[4][2][1]

The Greek adjective goes back to Proto-Indo-European *pléth₂us, from a root *pleth₂- (“flat”).[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to about 1400, in the glossaries of El Escorial.[4][2] Alonso de Palencia defines a paropsis as a plate of metal or earthenware or a large bowl.[4] DICCA-XV gives 1423 for its own first record and 1410 for the first in the CORDE.[7] The early hits of the CDH under this lemma are Latin prato “meadow” and personal names, not the word.[8]

Semantic evolution

From the vessel the word passed to the food served in it, and Covarrubias already uses muchos platos for many courses.[9] To him hacer plato, keeping a table for many guests, was a mark of lords and of display.[9] Autoridades describes plates of silver, gold, pewter, earthenware, porcelain and wood, and adds the senses “food served on a plate” and “daily food, board”, with the phrase poner el plato “to give someone the opening to do or say something”.[10] The Academy's 1817 edition added no haber quebrado un plato “never to have done anything wrong”.[11] Salvá records plato fuerte for the main meat or fish course.[12]

Machines brought new flat round parts: the turntable of a record player and the chainring of a bicycle.[3][1] In the River Plate and Bolivia un plato is a funny person or situation; in the Caribbean and Venezuela it is home plate in baseball, and in Bolivia and Chile a burner of a stove.[13][3] The word passed into Tagalog and Chavacano as plato.[1]

Timeline

  • c. 1400 – first record, in the Escorial glossaries.[4][2]
  • 1410 – the first record in the CORDE.[7]
  • c. 1495 – Nebrija gives Latin patina, lanx and discus.[14]
  • 1512 – the first record from the Americas, a large plate of copper in Puerto Rico.[15]
  • 1591 – Percyvall glosses it “a platter, a bason”.[16]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias derives it from Latin patina or from Greek and explains hacer plato.[9]
  • 1726–1739 – Autoridades gives the senses “plate”, “dish of food” and “daily board”.[10]
  • 1899 – the Academy's dictionary first gives an etymology, from a Low Latin platus “flattened”.[17]

Meanings

Noun

  1. plate, dish: a low, usually round vessel with a hollow centre and a flat rim, used to serve and eat food: Pon los platos hondos para la sopa.[3][1]
  2. The pan of a pair of scales.[3]
  3. A prepared food; a course of a meal: El cocido es un plato madrileño.[3][1]
  4. A plateful.[3]
  5. The round platter of a record player on which the record is placed.[3]
  6. The chainring of a bicycle, joined to the pedals and linked by the chain to the rear sprockets.[3][1]
  7. A flat round piece that holds or supports something.[3]
  8. A subject of gossip.[3]
  9. (architecture) A round ornament on a frieze.[3]
  10. (sports) A clay disc used as the target in tiro al plato “clay pigeon shooting”.[3]
  11. (colloquial, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Bolivia) A funny, cheerful person or situation.[3][13]
  12. (Nicaragua, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela) home plate in baseball.[13]
  13. (rare) Daily food, board.[3]

Word family

  • platillo
  • calientaplatos
  • escurreplatos
  • friegaplatos
  • lavaplatos
  • platón
  • secaplatos
  • platel

Usage notes

Common phrases include pagar los platos rotos “to take the blame for others”, ojos como platos “eyes like saucers” and plato combinado, in Spain a meal of several foods served on one plate.[1][3][18]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. plato
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. plato
  4. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 2, 345
  5. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. 6586
  6. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 2677
  7. ^ a b Lleal, Coloma (dir.), DICCA-XV: Diccionario del castellano del siglo XV en la Corona de Aragón, Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, Grup d'Estudis d'Història de la Llengua (GHCL), https://ghcl.ub.edu/diccaxv, p. s.v. plato
  8. ^ Real Academia Española (2013–), Corpus del Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (CDH), version 3.1, https://apps.rae.es/CNDHE, p. s.v. plato
  9. ^ a b c Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1218
  10. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 5, 294
  11. ^ Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 682
  12. ^ Salvá, Vicente (1846), Nuevo diccionario de la lengua castellana, París: Librería de Don Vicente Salvá, p. 855
  13. ^ a b c Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. plato
  14. ^ Nebrija, Antonio de (1513), Vocabulario español-latino, Salamanca, ed. Marina Vidal Díez (2007), Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, p. 398
  15. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. plato
  16. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 191
  17. ^ Real Academia Española (1899), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 13th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de los Sres. Hernando y Compañía, p. 789
  18. ^ León, Víctor (1980), Diccionario de argot español y lenguaje popular, Madrid: Alianza Editorial, p. s.v. plato

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Plato.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/plato. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·