metate

Borrowed from Spanish metate, from a Nahuan language, from Proto-Nahuan *metlatl.

• IPA^(key): /mɛˈtɑːteɪ/

metate (plural metates)

1. A flat stone with a slightly concave surface, used with another stone (a mano) for grinding maize or other grains.
   • 1985, James A. Michener, chapter V, in Texas, page 326:

         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.

metate

1. present adverbial passive participle of meti

mētāte

1. vocative masculine singular of mētātus

Borrowed from a Nahuan language, from Proto-Nahuan *metlatl.

• IPA^(key): /meˈtate/ [meˈt̪a.t̪e]
• Rhymes: -ate
• Syllabification: me‧ta‧te

metate m (plural metates)

1. metate (a flat stone with a slightly concave surface, used with another stone (mano) for grinding maize or other grains)

• → English: metate

• molcajete

• “metate”, in Diccionario de la lengua española (in Spanish), 23rd edition, Royal Spanish Academy, 2014 October 16