palette knife

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a blunt, flexible, flat-bladed artist's tool used to mix colors on a palette and sometimes to apply or remove paint

   The painter blended the two pigments with a palette knife before touching the canvas.

2. 2
   noun

   chiefly British: a broad, flexible, blunt kitchen knife used for spreading soft mixtures or lifting delicate food

   She smoothed the icing with a palette knife.

A compound of palette and knife, first recorded in English in the eighteenth century for the flexible blade used at an artist's palette. Palette was borrowed from French palette, a diminutive related to pale, 'shovel or blade.' The culinary sense developed from a similarly broad, blunt, flexible utensil.

Topics