Other forms: platforms
A platform is the long raised strip beside a railway line where you stand and wait for your train. Platform 4, the yellow line you keep behind, the board overhead announcing that the 7:42 is delayed.
Anything flat and raised is a platform: the low stage a speaker stands on, the boards bolted across a scaffold, the diving platform ten metres above the pool. From there the word goes two ways at once. A political platform is the set of promises a party stands on, laid out plank by plank before an election — he ran on a platform of lower taxes. And a platform in computing is whatever other things are built to run on: an operating system, a games console, and by now any large site people gather on, which is why your social apps are all called platforms. The little words repay attention here. You wait on the platform, the train leaves from platform 6, and software runs on a platform.
1nounrailThe raised walkway beside a railway line where passengers wait and board.~23%
“The train to Leeds leaves from platform 6.”
2nounstageAny flat raised surface built for people to stand or work on.~10%
“She climbed onto the platform so the back of the hall could see her.”
synonyms: stage
3nounplatformA system or service that other software, businesses or people are built on and gather on.~64%
“The game came out on three platforms at once.”
4nounpublicThe public programme a party or a candidate stands for.~3%
“He ran on a platform of lower taxes.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 185 sentences found in the wild and placed 178 of them on a sense (7 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
The French called it a plateforme — a flat form. The plate in it has nothing to do with dinner: it is the old word for flat, running back to Ancient Greek platys, flat, and the forme is Latin forma, shape. A flat shape, then, and every platform since has been one — the strip at the station, the stage in the hall, the software everything else stands on.
Latin
forma — shape; figure; form
Ancient Greek
πλατύς — flat
Old French
plat
Middle French
plateforme — a flat form
English, today
platform
Built from
From Middle French plateforme (“a flat form”), from plate (“flat”) (from Old French plat, from Ancient Greek πλατύς (“flat”)) + forme (“form”) (from Latin forma (“shape; figure; form”)); compare flatscape.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA