pate

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In this doubting mood you approach with firm step, for a pate is a living creature, and seem to neigh as you scent afar off the truffles whose perfumes escape through the gilded enclosure.

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Definitions (14)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. noun The human head, especially the top of the head: a bald pate.
  2. noun The mind or brain.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (9)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

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Examples (50)

  • At the long dining table, five out of the seven residents of the Refuge were already seated; an elaborate dinner of pheasant, julienne potatoes, pate, and Caesar salad was already laid out, though no one was yet eating, presumably waiting for Ray and -- that woman upstairs? —  F ;SF; - vol 090 issue 04 - April 1996
  • Corrado ran a hand over the slick strands that failed to cover his gleaming pate, and Sean wondered, not for the first time, if there was some link between responsibility and baldness. —  EQMM,June2007
  • TO A BLOCKHEAD You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come: Knock as you please, there's nobody at home Alexander Pope. —  The Book of Humorous Verse
  • Another thing, too, some people have said, At the top of her body there grew out a head; And what perhaps might make some people stare Her little bald pate was all covered with hair. —  The Book of Humorous Verse
  • An epigram put the case very neatly Says Ainsworth to Colburn,[22 A plan in my pate is To give my romance, as A supplement, gratis Says Colburn to Ainsworth Twill do very nicely For that will be charging Its value precisely Harrison Ainsworth could not have his portrait painted, nor write a novel of crime and sensation, without being regarded as a convenient peg for pleasantry. —  The History of "Punch"
 

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

scalp ·  cranium ·  wig ·  caviar ·  whisker
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. from Middle English pate, the crown of the head, from Old French pate, a plate, with loss of l (as also in pat, patch), for plate, a plate, from German platte, a plate, also a bald head, hence in vulgar use a head, Middle High German plate, a plate, a shaven pate, Middle Latin platta, a shaven pate, the tonsure of a monk: see plate, of which pate is thus a variant form.
  2. Origin obscure.
 

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/peɪt/
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