Other forms: pates
A pate is the top of the head, especially a bald one. A bald pate, his shining pate, scratch your pate.
It is archaic and almost always slightly comic, and it is used of bald heads more than of any other. It appears throughout Shakespeare. Note the spelling trap with pâté, the French meat paste, which takes an accent and is a different word entirely — and with pâte, the French for dough. Note also that pate's own origin is uncertain.
1nounpateThe top of the head, especially a bald one.
“The midday sun beat down on the old man's bald pate.”
pate is a part of the head.
PATE → bald and round as a PLATE
The top of his head is bald and round, and shines like a plate.
hooks ontoplate
Middle English pate is of uncertain origin, perhaps from a Latin word for a dish, by way of the head's shape. Nothing about it is settled.
Latin
patina — pan, dish
Medieval Latin
patena
Old French
patene
Middle English
pate
English, today
pate
From Middle English pate, of uncertain origin. Perhaps a shortened form of Old French patene or Medieval Latin patena, both from Latin patina (“pan, dish”). Alternatively, perhaps akin to Old Frisian pote (“skull”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA