palea
/ˈpælɪə/noun
palea is a noun meaning “The interior chaff or husk of grasses” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-A-L-E-A, and it appears about once in every 51 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of palea is paleae or pales.
What does palea mean?
noun
- 1
The interior chaff or husk of grasses.
- 2
One of the chaffy scales or bractlets growing on the receptacle of many compound flowers, such as the sunflower.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce palea?
- UK /ˈpælɪə/
- UK /ˈpeɪlɪə/
- UK /ˈpalɪə/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of palea
- paleae plural
- pales plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is palea?
Palea appears about once in every 51 million words in written English, the 222,788th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does palea come from?
Borrowed from Latin palea (“chaff”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).