pallet
Pluralpallets
Verbpallets, palleting, palleted
Often confused with palate and palette
Pluralpallets
Formspallets, palleting, palleted
- 1A portable platform on which goods are stacked for transport or storage, usually built so a forklift can move it easily.
The forklift driver lifted a pallet of bottled water onto the truck.
Pallets of cement bags lined the warehouse floor, waiting for delivery.
Similarskid
- 2To put goods on flat platforms called pallets.
Warehouse staff pallet the finished cartons before the trucks arrive each evening.
The night crew palleted three hundred cases of juice before midnight.
Similarpalletize
- 3A makeshift bed, put together from whatever is at hand.
She made up a pallet on the living room floor for her visiting nephew.
The volunteers slept on pallets of coats and blankets in the church basement.
- 4A bed made of straw, or a mattress stuffed with it.
The prisoner's only furniture was a pallet that crackled with dry straw whenever he turned over.
Travelers at the inn paid a penny for a straw pallet by the fire.
Note
The straw is in the name: the word came through Anglo-Norman paillete, "bundle of straw", from Old French paille, "straw", and ultimately Latin palea, "chaff". It belongs to prisons, inns and poor lodgings in older writing, and calling any rough bed a pallet, as in the broader makeshift bed, stretches the word beyond the straw it started with.
- 5One of the pieces or levers, connected with a clock's pendulum or a watch's balance, that receive the direct impulse of the scape-wheel.
Each tooth of the escape wheel strikes a pallet in turn, giving the pendulum a small push.
The watchmaker replaced the worn pallets, and the old clock kept time again.
Note
Clockmakers fit these in pairs, one on each arm of the anchor or lever. A tooth of the escape wheel locks against one, slides off it while giving the pendulum or balance a small push, and is caught by the other; that steady catch and release is what makes a clock tick. Thomas Reid's Treatise on Clock and Watch Making (1832) speaks of the right-hand and left-hand pallet.
- 6A wooden tool, often oval or round, used by potters, crucible makers, and similar workers to form, beat, and round their pieces.
The potter beat the sides of the jar with a wooden pallet until the walls were even.
The crucible makers rounded each damp vessel with pallets of hard maple.
- 7In an organ, a valve that opens to let air pass from the wind chest into a pipe or row of pipes.
When the organist presses a key, a pallet opens and wind rushes into the pipe.
The builder relined the pallets with fresh leather so they would seal tightly against the wind chest.
Note
Organ builders mean a hinged flap, usually held shut by a spring and by the pressure of the wind itself. Pressing a key pulls it open and lets wind into the pipe; in mechanical, or tracker, action the linkage is direct, so the player can feel the valve give way under the finger.
- 8A small catch, also called a click or pawl, that pushes a ratchet wheel to turn it.
With each stroke of the lever, the pallet pushes the ratchet wheel forward by one tooth.
The winch stopped turning because both pallets had worn smooth against the ratchet.
Similarpawl
Note
A ratchet drive often has two catches: one that pushes the wheel forward and one that stops it slipping back. Here the word names the driving one, carried on the moving lever, so each stroke advances the wheel by a tooth while the fixed catch holds what has been gained. Click and pawl are the more general names for such catches.
- 9In heraldry, a narrow vertical stripe that is a diminutive of the pale and narrower than it.
The family's arms show three silver pallets on a red field.
On the old shield, a black pallet divides the field between two golden lions.
Note
Heraldry grades its vertical stripes by width, and this one is the slim version of the pale, which is where its name comes from: Middle French pal, "pale", ultimately Latin palla, "a strip of cloth". Being narrow, it is often borne in a row of several across the field, as in three silver pallets on red.
- 10In gilding, an instrument for lifting gold leaf off the pillow and applying it to a surface.
With a light touch of the pallet, the gilder raised the thin leaf off its cushion and laid it on the carved frame.
She cut the leaf into strips on the pillow before picking each one up with the pallet.
Note
Gold leaf is far too thin and light to pick up with the fingers. The gilder cuts it on a padded pillow, lifts each piece with this flat tool, and lays it on the prepared surface, where it grips at once. The word names the craftsman's lifter, not the binder's heated tool for spines.
- 11Archaic form of palette.
Note
An older spelling of the painter's word, found in writing of the late 1700s and the 1800s, from Southey's Pious Painter to a reference book of 1860. Modern English keeps pallet for the loading platform and the straw bed, and spells the board for mixing colors palette, so in an old text a painter's pallet and brushes are part of the kit, not the bedding.
- 12A bookbinder's tool for gilding the spine of a book over its bands.
The binder heated the pallet and pressed a gold line across the spine above each raised band.
A worn pallet had left the gilt lines over the bands faint and uneven.
Note
Bookbinders count this among their finishing tools: a brass head with a straight line or narrow strip of pattern cut into its edge, set on a handle. Heated and pressed through gold leaf, it prints a straight gilt rule across the spine over each band in one stroke, which is why worn ones leave faint, uneven lines.
- 13In brickmaking, a board on which a newly molded brick is carried to the hack to dry.
The molder turned each brick out onto a wooden pallet, and a boy carried it off to the hack.
The carrier balanced two pallets at a time, each holding a fresh brick, as he walked to the hack.
- 14One of the series of disks or pistons fixed along the chain of a chain pump.
Worn leather on the pallets let the water slip back down the tube.
The mechanic fitted a new pallet to the chain, and the pump drew water again.
Note
In a chain pump an endless chain runs up through a pipe and back down outside it. The disks fixed along the chain fit the pipe closely, so as the chain is turned each one pushes a little column of water ahead of it and lifts it to the top; when their edges wear, the water slips back down.
- 15One of a pair of plates made of shell that protect the siphons of certain bivalves, such as Teredo.
Under the lens, the shipworm's left pallet looked like a tiny chalky paddle.
Specialists often tell Teredo species apart by the shape of their pallets.
Note
Shipworms such as Teredo are long, worm-like clams that bore into wood under water. When one draws its siphons back into its burrow, the two plates close the opening like a stopper, sealing the animal inside until it is safe to reach out again.
- 16A cup holding three ounces, formerly used by surgeons as a Parisian measure of blood drawn in bloodletting.
The Paris surgeon drew two pallets of blood from his feverish patient.
Each pallet was filled from the vein in the patient's arm and set aside on the table.
Note
A learned borrowing from French palette, the word belongs to the days when surgeons drew blood as a treatment and measured what they took. It was the measure of Paris, a cup of three ounces, and English writers used it only rarely.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English paillet, from Anglo-Norman paillete ("bundle of straw"), from Old French paille ("straw, chaff"), from Latin palea ("chaff").
Said to come from an unrecorded Middle English palet, from an unrecorded Middle French palet, from Middle French pal ("pale"), ultimately from Latin palla ("a strip of cloth").
A learned borrowing from French palette.