palace
Americannoun
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palaces
plural
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the official residence of a king, queen, bishop, or other sovereign or exalted personage.
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a large and stately mansion or building.
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a large and usually ornate place for entertainment, exhibitions, etc.
noun
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the official residence of a reigning monarch or member of a royal family
Buckingham Palace
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the official residence of various high-ranking church dignitaries or members of the nobility, as of an archbishop
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a large and richly furnished building resembling a royal palace
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of palace
1200–50; Middle English < Medieval Latin palācium, spelling variant of palātium, Latin: generic use of Palātium name of the hill in Rome on which the emperor's palace was situated; replacing Middle English paleis < Old French ≪ Latin Palātium
Explanation
A palace is a beautiful, large house where someone important, like a king, lives. Have you ever seen Buckingham Palace? That's where the Queen of England lives, and it's an enormous, ornate, heavily guarded building, which is typical of palaces. Palaces are lavish and over-the-top, because they are usually the home of a ruler such as a king, queen, or dictator. If you don’t live like a king, take comfort in this quote from the English poet John Donne: “Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.”
Vocabulary lists containing palace
"Return to Titanic" and "Talking with Robert Ballard"
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Unit 13
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for June 4–June 10, 2022
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
When the rabble in the street gets too close to the presidential palace for comfort, they keep half an eye on Florida real estate, much like Northeast Corridor retirees.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2026
"The King will not shy away from confronting the most shameful aspects of the past during this visit," a palace spokesperson said.
From Barron's ● Oct. 31, 2026
Sources close to the palace have in the past acknowledged that the negative publicity generated by lèse majesté convictions might do more harm than good.
From BBC ● Oct. 30, 2026
Cárdenas was born in Mexico City in 1934, the son of President Lázaro Cárdenas and Amalia Solórzano, and spent his first years in Los Pinos, the presidential palace.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2026
So the telling goes, the young doctor of Isfahan was summoned to the palace of a great pasha.
From "Everything Sad Is Untrue" by Daniel Nayeri
And with thousands of square miles, it contains a variety of different villages, price points and housing types, from palaces to modern, boxy flats.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
Maybe it’s not just that he envies their absolute power on the home front or their unabashedly lavish palaces.
From Slate ● Sep. 10, 2026
Habaneros grumble that the money he spent turning old palaces into stunning hotels -- now empty -- was wasted.
From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026
The city had no known palaces where a ruler or ruling class could have controlled these tools of commerce and administration.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 30, 2026
Ivy always drew the most beautiful artwork—her specialty was fairy-tale palaces covered in leafy vines that perfectly matched Ivy’s name.
From "The School for Whatnots" by Margaret Peterson Haddix
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
