palate

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. 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.
2. n. Botany The projecting part on the lower lip of a bilabiate corolla that closes the throat, as in a snapdragon.
3. n. The sense of taste: delicacies pleasing to the most refined palate.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The roof of the mouth and floor of the nose; the parts, collectively considered, which separate the oral from the nasal cavity. Most of the palate has a bony basis, formed of the maxillary bones and palate-bones, or of special plates or processes of these bones, the extent of which represents the bony or hard palate. Behind this, and continuous therewith, in man and many other animals, is the soft palate, a musculomembranous fold or curtain hanging down between the back part of the buccal cavity and the upper part of the pharynx, technically called the velum palati or veil of the palate.The uvula hangs from the middle of the free edge of this velum, and its sides are continuous with the contracted walls of the passage, called the pillars or arches of the palate, and constituting the isthmus of the fauces. In osteology the term palate is of course restricted to the bony parts. In fishes the palate is that part of the roof of the mouth which corresponds to the palatal bones, behind the vomer and in front of the pharyngeals. See palatal n., 1, and cuts under dromæognathous, mouth, nasal, and tonsil.
2. n. Taste; relish: from the idea that the palate is the organ of taste.
3. n. The power of relishing mentally; intellectual taste.
4. n. In botany, the projection of the lower lip of a personate corolla, more or less completely closing the throat, as in Linaria and Antirrhinum.
5. n. In entomology, the epipharynx, a fleshy lobe beneath the labrum. See cut under Hymenoptera.
6. To perceive by the taste; taste.

Wiktionary

1. n. Anatomy The roof of the mouth; the uraniscus.
2. n. The sense of taste.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Anat.) The roof of the mouth.
2. n. Relish; taste; liking; -- a sense originating in the mistaken notion that the palate is the organ of taste.
3. n. Mental relish; intellectual taste.
4. n. (Bot.) A projection in the throat of such flowers as the snapdragon.
5. v. obsolete To perceive by the taste.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the upper surface of the mouth that separates the oral and nasal cavities