Meaning of plate In English

• 0 a flat, usually round dish with a slightly raised edge that you eat from or serve food from:

  • paper/plastic/china plates

  • a dinner/salad plate

  • clean/dirty plates

  • There's still lots of food on your plate.

  • Stephen ate three plates of spaghetti.

• 1 a flat piece of something that is hard and does not bend:

  • Thick bony plates protected the dinosaur against attack.

  • The ship's deck is composed of steel plates.

• 2 a picture, especially in colour, in a book:

  • The three birds differ in small features (see Plate 4).

• 3 informal for home plate

• 4 ordinary metal with a layer of another metal on top:

  • The knives and forks are silver plate.

  • The thieves got away with a large quantity of church plate.

• 5 to cover a metal object with a thin layer of another metal, especially gold or silver:

  • We normally plate the car handles with nickel and then chrome.

• 6 a flat dish on which food is served or from which it is eaten

  • Dominic helped himself to a plate of spaghetti.

• 7 a flat piece of something that is hard, does not bend, and is usually used to cover something:

  • Large, metal plates covered the trench in the roadway.

• 8 one of the large moving layers of rock that the earth's surface is believed to be made of

• 9 to cover a metal object with a thin layer of another metal, esp. gold or silver:

  • gold plated