platter

nounB23 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #4,871 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: platters

A platter is a big flat dish you set down in the middle of the table for everyone to take from. The roast carried in on one, a cheese platter with grapes and crackers, a platter of sandwiches at a funeral.

It also means what is on the dish: order the seafood platter and you get the food, not the china. A platter is wider and flatter than a bowl and bigger than a plate, and it is for serving from, not for eating off. To hand someone something on a silver platter is to give it to them with no effort on their part, and it never sounds admiring. Inside a hard drive, the spinning discs are called platters too.

Definitions of platter

1nounplatterA large flat dish for serving food at the table.B2
“The turkey came in on a silver platter.”
- Said"Put everything on one platter and let people help themselves, would you?"
- WrittenThe platters came out in a slow procession: fish, then meat, then a mountain of fruit.
- UsedArrange the cheese on a platter an hour before guests arrive so it softens.
- ContrastA platter, not a plate. A plate is for one person; a platter is for the whole table to reach into. plate →
- Not thisA tray is not a platter. A tray carries things to the table; a platter stays on it.
- Exchange"Plates or a platter?""Platter. It's that kind of evening."
- SimplyThe bread is on the platter. Take a piece.
Patterna platter of + noun (cheese, seafood, fruit) · a serving platter · on a platter · handed to you on a platter
synonyms: dish, salver
2nounfoodThe food served on such a dish.B2
“We ordered the seafood platter to share.”
3nounspinningOne of the spinning discs inside a hard drive.C1
“The drive is dead; the head has scratched the platter.”

platter is a serving dish.

Remember it

PLATTER → a PLATE, only FATTER

A plate that ate too much: longer, wider, fatter, carrying the whole roast chicken to the table.

hooks ontoplate

Phrases it lives in

on a silver platter — given to someone with no effort required from them

Where it comes from

Platter comes through Middle English plater and Anglo-Norman plater, a variant of platel, from Old French plate, a metal plate. So it sits in the same family as plate, and it is a doublet of plateau, which is the same flat wide idea stretched across a landscape.

Old French
plate — metal plate
Anglo-Norman
plater
Middle English
plater
English, today
platter

From Middle English plater, from Anglo-Norman plater, dissimilatory variant of platel, from Old French plate (“metal plate”) (see plate). a doublet of plateau.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Definitions of platter

1nounplatterA large flat dish for serving food at the table.B2

“The turkey came in on a silver platter.”

Said"Put everything on one platter and let people help themselves, would you?"
WrittenThe platters came out in a slow procession: fish, then meat, then a mountain of fruit.
UsedArrange the cheese on a platter an hour before guests arrive so it softens.
ContrastA platter, not a plate. A plate is for one person; a platter is for the whole table to reach into. plate →
Not thisA tray is not a platter. A tray carries things to the table; a platter stays on it.
Exchange"Plates or a platter?""Platter. It's that kind of evening."
SimplyThe bread is on the platter. Take a piece.

Patterna platter of + noun (cheese, seafood, fruit) · a serving platter · on a platter · handed to you on a platter

synonyms: dish, salver

2nounfoodThe food served on such a dish.B2

“We ordered the seafood platter to share.”

3nounspinningOne of the spinning discs inside a hard drive.C1

“The drive is dead; the head has scratched the platter.”

platter is a serving dish.