Metate
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A flat stone with a slightly concave surface, used with another stone (a mano) for grinding maize or other grains.
"Each evening, when he returned home, he found that María he prepared some new treat, for she was a most ingenious woman, capable of transforming the poorest materials into something delicious, and he grew to love the tortillas she made so patiently, kneeling before the stone metate as she beat the boiled corn into the gray-white mixture she later baked on the flat rocks."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Each evening, when he returned home, he found that María he prepared some new treat, for she was a most ingenious woman, capable of transforming the poorest materials into something delicious, and he grew to love the tortillas she made so patiently, kneeling before the stone metate as she beat the boiled corn into the gray-white mixture she later baked on the flat rocks."
Etymology
Borrowed from Spanish metate, from a Nahuan language, from Proto-Nahuan *mətla-tl.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.