That Pallet of Palettes Isn’t Heavy….
Okay, here are three words that sound almost exactly alike, but mean totally different things.
Pallet: /PA’ lit/ The slatted wooden box that underlies large shipments; also the shipment itself. A pallet jack is a small hydraulic jack/forklift used to hoick a pallet of goods off the warehouse floor and transport it onto a semi for transport. Some people use old pallets to make fences, forts, or shelves. (In the part of the South where I live, a pallet is also a flat nest of quilts and blankets laid upon the floor for a person to sleep on.)
Palette: /puh LET’/ or /PA’ lit/ depending on where you live. The mixing board used by artists for their daubs of paint. Usually an oval shape with a thumb-hole cut in one narrow end. Also used to refer to a spectrum of colours or the range of choices provided in an artistic endeavour. (Example: That artist’s palette consists primarily of muddy colours in the blue and yellow families.) May be used in a metaphorical sense to refer to the range of choices available in any creative endeavour. (Example: The palette of ingredients in Thai cooking includes cilantro, coconut milk, hot peppers, and lime juice.)
Palate: /PAL’ uht/ The roof of the mouth, or the sense of taste. Everyone has a hard palate and a soft palate: areas of the roof of the mouth. The uvula hangs down at the back of the soft palate. When one is said to have a well-developed palate, it means that one enjoys tasting new and exotic foods. One may also be said to need to develop one’s palate: to train oneself to appreciate such foods as wine, foie gras, or truffles (the mushroom, not the chocolate), or to sense subtle differences in varieties of the same food (like wine or grapes). A person with a highly trained palate, like Chef Gordon Ramsay, can often tell you, just by tasting a dish, what ingredients are incorporated in it—even in very complex sauces and highly seasoned dishes.
3 Comments
Editormum – When I was a child, we were always begging to sleep on a pallet on the floor on a hot night. What we meant was to just take an old quilt and spread it out on the floor and sleep there.
A variation of another word you used. You mentioned “hoick a pallet of goods off the floor.” That word, hoick, is also a person that will tell you the truth about the way you look, as in, “The hoick told her that her hair looked bad purple.” Also, where I grew up the word hoick meant to clear the throat by bringing up a goober and spitting it out.
Which word in the English language do you suppose holds the record for the most different meanings?
Mum,
A little voice told me to ask you this question – as I’m sure you know the answer – and when I looked up from my coffee, your name was on the screen. So I’ll ask you this:
What is the proper usage of dependent/dependant?
Do I say my child is my dependent or my dependant? Is my ability to walk dependent or dependant on having feet?
Thanks!