pallet

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpælɪt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈpælɪt/, /ˈpælət/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ˈpælət/
• Rhymes: -ælɪt
• Homophones: palate, palette, pallette

From Middle English palet, from Anglo-Norman palete, from Old Norse pallr. Doublet of palette.

This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term.

pallet (plural pallets)

1. A portable platform, usually designed to be easily moved by a forklift, on which goods can be stacked, for transport or storage.
2. (military) A flat base for combining stores or carrying a single item to form a unit load for handling, transportation, and storage by materials handling equipment[1].
3. (military) (DOD only) 463L pallet – An 88” x 108” aluminum flat base used to facilitate the upload and download of aircraft[1].

• palletizer

pallet (third-person singular simple present pallets, present participle palleting, simple past and past participle palleted)

1. (transitive) To load or stack (goods) onto pallets.

From the Middle English paillet, from Anglo-Norman paillete (“bundle of straw”), from Old French paille (“straw, chaff”), from Latin palea (“chaff”)

pallet (plural pallets)

1. A straw bed.
   • 1599, Thomas Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe:

     That good old blind bibber of Helicon I wot well, came a begging to one of the chiefe citties of Greece, & promiſed them vaſt corpulent volumes of immortallity, if they would beſtowe vpon him but a ſlender outbrothers annuity of muttõ & broth, and a pallet to ſleep on; and with deriſion they reiected him

2. (By extension from above) A makeshift bed.

Latin palla: to cut; hence a strip of cloth. The diminutive of the pale.

pallet (plural pallets)

1. (heraldry) A narrow vertical stripe.

pallet (plural pallets)

1. (painting) Archaic form of palette.
   • Robert Southey

     The Old Dragon fled when the wonder he spied, / And cursed his own fruitless endeavor; / While the Painter call'd after his rage to deride, / Shook his pallet and brushes in triumph, and cried, / "I'll paint thee more ugly than ever!"

   • 1860, Chambers's Information for the People (volume 1, page 203)

     For example, let a painter's pallet be suspended from the thumb-hole, as in the figure […]

2. A wooden implement, often oval or round, used by potters, crucible makers, etc., for forming, beating, and rounding their works.
3. A potter's wheel.
4. (gilding) An instrument used to take up gold leaf from the pillow, and to apply it.
5. (gilding) A tool for gilding the backs of books over the bands.
6. (brickmaking) A board on which a newly moulded brick is conveyed to the hack.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

7. (engineering) A click or pawl for driving a ratchet wheel.
8. (engineering) One of the series of disks or pistons in the chain pump.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

9. (horology) One of the pieces or levers connected with the pendulum of a clock, or the balance of a watch, which receive the immediate impulse of the scape-wheel, or balance wheel.

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Brande & C to this entry?)

10. (music) In the organ, a valve between the wind chest and the mouth of a pipe or row of pipes.
11. (zoology) One of a pair of shelly plates that protect the siphon tubes of certain bivalves, such as the Teredo.
12. A cup containing three ounces, formerly used by surgeons.

• The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press
• Notes:

• L-plate, laplet, platel

From English pallet.

• IPA^(key): /ˈpɛlət/

• Audio

  (file)

• Homophone: pellet

pallet m (plural pallets, diminutive palletje n)

1. pallet

English pallet

pallet m (plural pallet)

1. pallet

pallet

1. third-person singular present active indicative of palleō