An artist's 'palette' is named after a shovel — Latin 'pala' (spade) via a French diminutive for flat things.
A thin board or slab on which an artist mixes colors; the range of colors used by a particular artist or in a particular picture; more broadly, the range of elements available for use in any domain.
From French 'palette,' a diminutive of Old French 'pale' (a flat blade, a paddle, a shovel), from Latin 'pala' (spade, shovel, shoulder blade), from PIE *pelh2- (flat, broad — also underlying 'plain,' 'plane,' 'palm' of the hand) or *peh2g- (to fasten, to fix — the same root as 'peg'). The semantic chain: flat broad implement (spade) → small flat implement (the board for mixing pigments). The diminutive suffix '-ette' makes it literally 'a little flat thing.' Latin
English has three homophones that are frequently confused: 'palette' (an artist's color board), 'pallet' (a wooden platform for shipping, or a straw bed), and 'palate' (the roof of the mouth, or one's sense of taste). All three trace to Latin roots involving flatness, but they arrived in English through different paths and at different times.
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