plate

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
plate/pleɪt/

▶noun

• 1 a flat dish, typically circular, from which food is eaten or served.

  ■ N. Amer. a main course of a meal.

  ■ Austral./NZ a plate of food contributed by a guest to a social gathering.

• 2 any shallow dish, especially one used for collecting donations in a church.

  ■ Biology a shallow glass dish on which a culture may be grown.

• 3 bowls, cups, and other utensils made of gold or silver.

  ■ a silver or gold dish or trophy awarded as a prize.

• 4 a thin, flat sheet or strip of metal or other material, typically one used to join or strengthen or forming part of a machine.

  ■ a small, flat piece of metal bearing a name or inscription, designed to be fixed to a wall or door.

  ■ short for number plate. ■Baseball short for home plate. ■a horizontal timber laid along the top of a wall to support the ends of joists or rafters.

  ■ a light horseshoe for a racehorse.

• 5 Botany & Zoology a thin, flat organic structure or formation: fused bony plates.

  ■ Geology each of the several rigid pieces of the earth's lithosphere which together make up the earth's surface.

• 6 a sheet of metal or other material bearing an image of type or illustrations from which multiple copies are printed.

  ■ a printed photograph or illustration in a book.

  ■ a thin sheet of metal or glass coated with a light-sensitive film on which an image is formed, used in larger or older types of camera.

• 7 a thin piece of metal that acts as an electrode in a capacitor, battery, or cell.

  ■ N. Amer. the anode of a thermionic valve.

▶verb

• 1 cover (a metal object) with a thin coating of a different metal.

  ■ cover with plates of metal for decoration or protection.

• 2 serve or arrange on a plate.

• 3 Baseball score or cause to score (a run or runs).

• 4 Biology inoculate (cells or infective material) on to a culture plate, especially with the object of isolating a particular strain of microorganisms or estimating viable cell numbers.

– phrases
on a plate informal indicating that something has been achieved with little or no effort.
on one's plate chiefly Brit. occupying one's time or energy.

– derivatives
plateful noun (pl. platefuls),
plater noun,
plating noun.

– origin ME: from OFr., from med. L. plata ‘plate armour’, based on Gk platus ‘flat’; sense 1 represents OFr. plat ‘platter’.