pallet1
/ˈpalɪt
/noun
1A straw mattress.I had all the beds, all the air mattresses, couches and pallets....
- The bed had a thick straw pallet for mattress, and the sheets were threadbare and grubby, but they had slept on worse.
- Sleeping pallets filled with cheap straw - uncomfortable to sleep on, but the boys were usually tired enough not to care - were scattered about her, each with a figure sprawled out on top.
1.1A crude or makeshift bed.Inside, there were half a dozen crude pallets arranged about the remains of a small fire....
- Drowsing on the makeshift pallet, he learns his first lesson of what it means to have money: the rich often endure boredom.
- We were on a pallet with a mattress of straw, with a coarse but warm blanket over us.
Origin
Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French paillete, from paille 'straw', from Latin palea.
The first sense recorded for this was ‘a flat wooden blade with a handle’ used to shape clay or plaster: it comes from French palette ‘little blade’, from Latin pala ‘spade’ (related to palus ‘stake’, see pale). The pallet used with a forklift truck is from the early 20th century. The French form was adopted directly in the early 17th century for the flat artist's palette on which to mix colours, with the sense of ‘range of colours’ developing in the late 18th century.
Rhymes
pallet2
/ˈpalɪt/noun
1A portable platform on which goods can be stacked, stored, and moved.Vegetation occupied by snails in the zone to be inundated will be removed by hand, stacked on pallets and moved above the flood....
- When we arrived a number of pallets had been stacked up against the outside the building and set alight.
- After an aluminum pallet holds 12 stacked crates, the computer opens a gate allowing the pallet to move forward for further loading.
2A flat wooden blade with a handle, used to shape clay or plaster.Use an artist's pallet knife or similar tool to apply yellow wood glue between the veneer and the substrate....
- Impasto thickness can be created and can be enhanced with the use of a pallet knife.
3A projection on a machine part, serving to change the mode of motion of a wheel.This system combines a pneumatically actuated chuck with a pallet to hold the workpiece....
- The Barker lever was a small bellows operated by a second pallet valve connected to the key.
- The scanning is performed on a horizontal machining center with pallet changer.
3.1(In a clock or watch) a projection transmitting motion from an escapement to a pendulum or balance wheel.Where there is a separate carrier for the pallets, as in the lever escapement, this can be considered as part of the controller....
- The pallet lever, timed by the balance wheel, alternately stops and releases the escape wheel and is thus responsible for actually carrying out the timing.
Derivatives
palleted
- The giant grey buildings dominate the landscape and can be seen 24 hours a day because they are floodlit to allow staff to work through the night assembling palleted loads for delivery to supermarkets.
- The cooler space will act as a distribution center for palleted products that are not in traditional milk cases, but in packed corrugated boxes.
- The forks are used to offload shipments of palleted materials at the shop and to carry sod, blocks, pavers, and other items on the job site.
Origin
Late Middle English (in (sense 2)): from French palette 'little blade', from Latin pala 'spade' (related to palus 'stake').
pallet3
/ˈpalɪt/noun Heraldry
The diminutive of the pale, a narrow vertical strip, usually borne in groups of two or three.The Arms are blazoned Gules on each of three Pallets Or a Pallet Sable thereon a Leek Or....
- Some describe the Keith arms as "argent, on a chief or, three pallets gules" (silver shield with three, vertical red stripes on gold in the top 1/3rd of the shield).
Origin
Late 15th century: diminutive of the noun pale2.