PALETTE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Palette

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/pˈælət/ Listen

noun

Palette n.

1.

(Paint.) A thin, oval or square board, or tablet, with a thumb hole at one end for holding it, on which a painter lays and mixes his pigments. Hence, any other object, usually one with a flat surface, used for the same purpose. (Written also pallet)

2.

Hence: The complete set of colors used by an artist or other person in creating an image, in any medium. The meaning of this term has been extended in modern times to include the set of colors used in a particular computer application, or the complete set of of colors available in computer displays or printing techniques.

3.

Hence: The complete range of resources and techniques used in any art, such as music.

4.

(Anc. Armor) One of the plates covering the points of junction at the bend of the shoulders and elbows.

5.

(Mech.) A breastplate for a breast drill.

Palette knife, a knife with a very flexible steel blade and no cutting edge, rounded at the end, used by painters to mix colors on the grinding slab or palette.

To set the palette (Paint.), to lay upon it the required pigments in a certain order, according to the intended use of them in a picture.

See images of 'Palette'

Etymology of 'Palette'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Palette" Quotes from Famous Books

... they bathed in a tree-shaded pool that had formed in the bed of a stream running across the farm. They had no bathing frocks but their skins, and sometimes Clive, sitting stark on the bank, palette in hand, painted the others as they tumbled in the dark brown water, sporting and splashing like a lot of schoolboys. Afterwards they would mooch home through the shimmering noontide heat, deliciously tired, wrapped in reflection and their towels. Ghostie provided ...

— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley

... the great secret of his art. It is strange that his favourite amongst all his pupils was the one whose style least resembled his own—Gerard Douw—he who aimed at the most excessive minuteness of delineation, who stopped key-holes lest a particle of dust should fall on his palette, who gloried in representing the effects of fresh scouring on the side ...

— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... inkcase of the Universal East is a lineal descendant of the wooden palette with writing reeds. See an illustration of that of "Amasis, the good god and lord of the two lands" (circ. B.C. 1350) in British Museum (p. 41, "The Dwellers on the Nile," by E. A. Wallis Bridge, London, 56, ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... were painted giants, magnificently glorified from the brush and palette of the frost; when the first crops had been gathered, a spirit of festivity and cheer descended on the block-houses of Fort Parish. Then into the outlying cabins emboldened spirits began moving in escape from the cramp ...

— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... to whom so large a sum was of so small an account as to be thrown to a bystander in return for a trifling piece of assistance. Of course, it must have been Raffles Haw. And his sister had the note, with instructions to return it to the owner, could he be found. He threw aside his palette, and descending into the sitting-room he told Laura and his father of his morning's interview with the vicar, and of his conviction that this was the man of whom ...

— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

Copyright © 2025 Free Translator.org