plate
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
5 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "plate", 5-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "plate" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "plate" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
plate is aEnglishnoun. It means: A slightly curved but almost flat dish from which food is served or eaten. Pronounced /ˈpleɪ̯t/. It ranks #2,751 in English word frequency. Often confused with play and plot.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | plate |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpleɪ̯t/ |
| Letters | 5 |
| Frequency rank | #2,751 |
| Misspellings tracked | 6 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for plate is 5 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpleɪ̯t/. Corpus data places it at rank #2,751 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 37 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 6 documented wrong-spelling variants for plate, with forms such as "lpate", "palte", and "plaet". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "play", "plot", "prat", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English plate, from Old French plate, from Medieval Latin plata, from Vulgar Latin *plat(t)us, from Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús, “broad, flat, wide”). Compare Spanish plato. (foot): Cockney rhyming slang, from "plates of meat" for "feet". Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is plate, spelled P-L-A-T-E, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A slightly curved but almost flat dish from which food is served or eaten.
- 2Such dishes collectively.
- 3The contents of such a dish.
- 4A course at a meal.
- 5An agenda of tasks, problems, or responsibilities
- 6A flat object of uniform thickness.
- 7Vehicle license plates, registration plates.
- 8A taxi permit, especially of a metal disc.
- 9Plate armor.
- 10A layer of a material on the surface of something, usually qualified by the type of the material; plating
- 11A material covered with such a layer.
- 12An ornamental or food service item coated with silver or gold or otherwise decorated.
- 13A weighted disk, usually of metal, with a hole in the center for use with a barbell, dumbbell, or exercise machine.
- 14An engraved surface used to transfer an image to paper.
- 15An image or copy.
- 16An illustration in a book, either black and white, or colour, usually on a page of paper of different quality from the text pages.
- 17A shaped and fitted surface, usually ceramic or metal that fits into the mouth and in which teeth are implanted; a dental plate.
- 18A horizontal framing member at the top or bottom of a group of vertical studs.
- 19A person's foot.
- 20Home plate.
- 21A tectonic plate.
- 22Any of various larger scales found in some reptiles.
- 23A flat electrode such as can be found in an accumulator battery, or in an electrolysis tank.
- 24The anode of a vacuum tube.
- 25A prize given to the winner in a contest.
- 26Any flat piece of material such as coated glass or plastic.
- 27A metallic card, used to imprint tickets with an airline's logo, name, and numeric code.
- 28The ability of a travel agent to issue tickets on behalf of a particular airline.
- 29A VIN plate, particularly with regard to the car's year of manufacture.
- 30One of the thin parts of the brisket of an animal.
- 31A very light steel horseshoe for racehorses.
- 32Skins for fur linings of garments, sewn together and roughly shaped, but not finally cut or fitted.
- 33The fine nap (as of beaver, musquash, etc.) on a hat whose body is made from inferior material.
- 34A record, usually vinyl.
- 35trauma plate.
- 36Any of the potential romantic or sexual partners with whom a person keeps in touch as part of plate spinning.
- 37A Lego piece that is thin, 1/3 the height of a brick, and has studs on top.
Etymology
From Middle English plate, from Old French plate, from Medieval Latin plata, from Vulgar Latin *plat(t)us, from Ancient Greek πλατύς (platús, “broad, flat, wide”). Compare Spanish plato. (foot): Cockney rhyming slang, from "plates of meat" for "feet".
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: lpate,palte,plaet,pllate,pltae,pplate
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for plate
Misspelling Variants of "plate"
Frequency rank: #2,751 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: