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plate

noun · verb

Simple meaning

Dish on which food is served or from which food is eaten.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

playt
US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈpleɪt

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. Dish on which food is served or from which food is eaten

  2. The contents of such a dish.

  3. uncountable

    Such dishes collectively.

  4. A course at a meal.

  5. A layer of a material on the surface of something, usually qualified by the type of the material; plating

  6. A flat object of uniform thickness.

verb

  1. To cover the surface material of an object with a thin coat of another material, usually a metal.

  2. transitive

    To arm or defend with metal plates.

  3. transitive

    To beat into thin plates.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A2 · Elementary (estimated)
Frequency
Common
Typical Use
General English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: One of the thin parts of the brisket of an animal.

Used this way, plate is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use plate

  • “We finished making the plates this morning.”noun
  • “I filled my plate from the bountiful table.”noun
  • “I ate a plate of beans.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

Flat

flat plate

Precious

silver plate

Other combinations

steel platelicense plateplate tectonicssee plateglass platecolor plate

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Inflected forms

Grammatical variations of the same word.

  • platingnounInflected form

    A thin coating of metal deposited on a surface.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • comb-platenounCompound term

    A locomotor organ consisting of a row of strong cilia whose bases are fused.

  • dry plate processnounCompound term

    A former photographic method that used a glass plate coated with a light-sensitive gelatinous emulsion.

  • dry platenounCompound term

    A former photographic method that used a glass plate coated with a light-sensitive gelatinous emulsion.

  • collection platenounCompound term

    A shallow receptacle for collection in church.

  • end-platenounCompound term

    The flattened end of a motor neuron that transmits neural impulses to a muscle.

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.