metate

American  

[muh-tah-tee, me-tah-te] / məˈtɑ ti, mɛˈtɑ tɛ /

noun

metates plural

1. a flat stone that has a shallow depression in the upper surface for holding maize or other grains to be ground with a mano.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• metates
  plural

Etymology

Origin of metate

1825–35, < Mexican Spanish < Nahuatl metlatl

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

metate metates

The woman's mother had buried her molcajete, metate, comal, and cazuelas in a hole in the ground and fled.

From Salon ● Feb. 23, 2023

Each of the seating areas has a bench shaped like a metate and a brand that marks the cattle of that region.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 2, 2021

Now and then she flicked bits of cinnamon onto the pocked ashen surface of the metate.

From New York Times ● Nov. 11, 2021

An original mano and metate, a pair of stones used for grinding, lay on the dirt floor of one room.

From Slate ● Jun. 12, 2015

I discovered a fine large metate or Indian mill, deeply hollowed out, and foolishly attempted to take it to camp.

From A Canyon Voyage The Narrative of the Second Powell Expedition down the Green-Colorado River from Wyoming, and the Explorations on Land, in the Years 1871 and 1872 by Dellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel

The metates also display many puzzling pseudo-glyphs on them that have yet to be studied and deciphered.

From National Geographic

Some archaeologists believe the metates may have been used not just as thrones, but also as seats for carrying the bundled and decorated bodies of the dead to their final resting place.

From National Geographic

The usual office of these metates is considered to be that of grinding corn, cocoa, and the like.

From Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1884-1885, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1888, pages 3-188 by Holmes, William Henry

In almost every house that bore evidence of former occupancy, beautifully made mullers and metates were exhumed.

From Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744 by Fewkes, Jesse Walter

In a corner stood the frame for the grinding-slabs, or metates, and in it the three plates of lava on which the Indian crushes and pulverizes his maize were placed in the convenient slanting position.

From The Delight Makers by Bandelier, Adolph Francis Alphonse