Re: Talking about horses...

Ric Locke <warrick.locke@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 1 May 2007 15:27:45 +0100, Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:
But what I'm not sure about is whether the stuff called silver plate is
always made by a process of silver plating something (so the thing can
accurately described as silver plated) or whether there are other ways
of making silver plate.

IOW, is all silver plate silver plated?

Jonathan

No. Calling dishware and cutlery "plate" comes from Spanish "plata" =
"silver". When a Victorian or earlier talks about "the plate" he means
solid silver stuff.

I didn't know that. Learn something new every day ...

I haven't been able to confirm it[*] though:

My biggish Spanish dictionary is hiding. My little, pocket sized five
languages dictionary (Italiano, Inglese, Francese, Tedesco and Spagnolo,
the cover seems to be in Italian) translates "plato" as "dish" (in
English, also piatto, assiette and Teller <g>). Oh, wait, "plata" with
an "a": argento, silver, argent and Silber <g>.

Interesting.

How would one say "a silver dish" in Spanish?

I really need to find a proper dictionary.

Silver being highly conductive, it is also relatively easy to electroplate,
so use of the word "plate" to mean a coating deposited by electrochemical
means /also/ derives from the same source. Handy for people who care to
misrepresent the composition of what they're selling. The distinction
between "plate" and "plated" is larger than a verb ending.

One of the English meanings of plate seems to be a thin *** of metal
(as in plate armour) but thefreedictionary.com says one meaning of
"silver plate" includes both solid silver and silver-plated plates etc.

Jonathan
[*] No disrespect intended: I *always* try to confirm new information
from more than one independent source. Until then, it has to be mentally
tagged as "X said that ...". This really annoys some people (e.g. one of
my brothers but until he proves he's infallible, he'll just have to live
with it). Same for everyone else: after all, even *I* made a mistake
once. Years ago. Arguably.

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