Other forms: palms
Your palm is the flat inside of your hand, between the wrist and the fingers. It is where you catch a coin, where a fortune-teller traces the lines, where the sweat shows when you are nervous.
The same word names a tree: the tall tropical one with a bare trunk and a crown of huge leaves, giving us palm oil, coconut palms and Palm Sunday. As a verb, to palm something is to hide it in your hand while pretending to put it down, which is how half of card magic works. To palm something off on somebody is to get rid of it by talking them into taking it. Something in the palm of your hand is entirely under your control, and to grease a palm is to bribe.
1nounhandThe flat inside surface of the hand, from the wrist to the base of the fingers.
“He held the beetle in the palm of his hand and showed the children.”
2nountallA tall tropical tree with a bare trunk and a crown of large leaves.
“A row of palms runs the whole length of the beach.”
3verbhideTo hide something in your hand, especially while pretending to put it somewhere else.
“The magician palmed the card before anyone had blinked.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
palm is a part of the hand.
Palm comes through Old English palm from Latin palma, which meant the palm of the hand and the palm tree at once, and behind that lies a Proto-Indo-European word for the flat of the hand, from a root meaning simply 'flat'. The hand came first; the tree took the name from its leaves. Look at a palm frond spread open and you are looking at a hand with the fingers apart.
Proto-Indo-European
*pleh₂-
Proto-Indo-European
*pl̥h₂meh₂
Latin
palma — palm-tree, palm-branch, palm of the hand
Old English
palm
Middle English
palme
English, today
palm
Built from
From Middle English palme, from Old English palm, palma (“palm-tree, palm-branch”), from Latin palma (“palm-tree, palm-branch, palm of the hand”), from Proto-Indo-European pl̥h₂meh₂, pl̥h₂emeh₂ (“palm of the hand”), from Proto-Indo-European pleh₂- (“flat”). Cognate with Dutch palm, German Palme, Danish palme, Icelandic pálmur (“palm”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA