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:
Concerns about his age resurfaced two years ago following an accident in the palace bathroom—he fell while cutting his nails and underwent emergency surgery to drain a brain bleed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 4, 2026
The palace said discussions about the colonial legacy and the slave trade were "important" but "primarily matters for governments to address".
From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 2026
A king must come from the Babiito clan, specifically the lineage of King George David Matthew Kamurasi Rukidi III, according to royal palace sources.
From BBC ● Sep. 28, 2026
Law even lived for decades on the palace grounds as the official historian.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 25, 2026
The paupers’ food line was still there, queuing up patiently around the side of the palace: the young, the old, the in-between, all just as hungry and downtrodden as ever.
From "The Hidden Gallery" by Maryrose Wood
The room is described as a "calm, cosy place for contemplation" by the independent charity which looks after six royal sites and palaces.
From BBC ● Sep. 21, 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
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
Yachts akin to floating palaces fill the marina, celebrity chefs jet in for residencies at local restaurants and Pampelonne Beach morphs into a sandy catwalk with seasonal beach clubs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
The dream was an appealing one, the architects agreed, and no one doubted Chicago’s sincerity in imagining this fantasy precinct of lagoons and palaces, but the reality was something else entirely.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
Definitions 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.
