Feeling quizzical today?

I am.

Here’s a trio of terms that tend to trick the tongue and perplex the pen …

• palate
• palette
• pallet

If you can’t match the following definitions with the words above, I have a fun exercise for you that I came up with so I can remember the spelling of each.

• a wooden bed or flat platform onto which goods are loaded
• the roof of your mouth or sense of taste
• a flat board an artist mixes paint on or a range of colors

Take a guess, and then scroll down to find out how I remember these rascally words.

Palate: the roof of your mouth or sense of taste

(spelled plate with an a added)

“My palate is best served when I use a plate.”

Pallet: a wooden bed or a flat platform onto which goods are loaded

(Ma Mallet and Pa Pallet are a team)

“Bring me that mallet so I can take apart this pallet.”

Palette: a flat board an artist mixes paint on or a range of colors

(pal-ette smacks of French, well, because it is)

“The French artist was mixing paints on a palette while wearing a French barette.”

Photo by Jennifer Rensel via Wikimedia Commons

Oh, honey …

who among us northern gals

hasn’t secretly bid her tongue to slip

effortlessly into that sweet southern nectar

known as a d-r-a-w-l.

Or, should I say,

d … r … a … w … l …

That’s right, you have to slow it down,

stretch every syllable out a little bit m-o-r-e,

maybe even summon an extra syllable or two.

Just for effect.

Lil’l Southern Belles by Hamilton Hamilton, 1894, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Well, in case you’d like to try your tongue at a tantalizing twang

(you know, in the car while you’re driving alone, in the shower where no one can hear … ),

start with this word:

mabalane.

No, not just mabalane all squished together …

Like this:

maa … buh … layyyn …

That’s it!

The funny thing about this word is that it’s really an obscure term that comes to us from South Africa, meaning “a clerk, a secretary; a person whose work includes the keeping of written records.”

It’s not really the definition that matters, though, it’s the way it sounds rolling from your lips.

Master the word mabalane, and soon you’ll be hollering “y’all!”

with the best of those silver-tongued southern belles.

Vivian Leigh in Gone with the Wind courtesy of Wikimedia Commons