palate — OAT · Shobdo

palate

noun

1 the tea was so hot it burned her palate:

roof of the mouth;

hard palate, soft palate.

2 the spicy menus have been toned down to suit the tourist palate:

sense of taste, taste, taste buds;

appetite, stomach.

3 a wine with a zingy, peachy palate:

flavor, taste, savor;

rare goût.

word links	palate
palatoplasty repair of cleft palate

easily confused words

palate, palette, or pallet?

These unrelated words may be confused because of their similar pronunciation. A person's palate is their sense of taste and discrimination (this dish may be too exotic for the British palate). Literally, the word denotes the roof of the mouth. Palette, on the other hand, literally denotes an artist's board for mixing colors, but is also used to refer to the range of colors used (gold, burnt orange, stone, and mink are used to create a warm palette). Pallet has no common figurative uses, and means either a crude bed, a platform on which goods are stacked for transport, or a vertical strip on a heraldic shield.