Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The roof of the mouth in vertebrates having a complete or partial separation of the oral and nasal cavities and consisting of the hard palate and the soft palate.
  • noun Botany The projecting part on the lower lip of a bilabiate corolla that closes the throat, as in a snapdragon.
  • noun The sense of taste.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The roof of the mouth and floor of the nose; the parts, collectively considered, which separate the oral from the nasal cavity.
  • noun Taste; relish: from the idea that the palate is the organ of taste.
  • noun The power of relishing mentally; intellectual taste.
  • noun In botany, the projection of the lower lip of a personate corolla, more or less completely closing the throat, as in Linaria and Antirrhinum.
  • noun In entomology, the epipharynx, a fleshy lobe beneath the labrum.
  • To perceive by the taste; taste.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Anat.) The roof of the mouth.
  • noun Relish; taste; liking; -- a sense originating in the mistaken notion that the palate is the organ of taste.
  • noun Mental relish; intellectual taste.
  • noun (Bot.) A projection in the throat of such flowers as the snapdragon.
  • transitive verb obsolete To perceive by the taste.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Anatomy The roof of the mouth; the uraniscus.
  • noun The sense of taste.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the upper surface of the mouth that separates the oral and nasal cavities

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French palat, from Latin palātum, perhaps of Etruscan origin.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old French palat, from Latin palātum ("roof of the mouth, palate"), perhaps of Etruscan origin.

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