A palette is a flat board or surface that artists use to hold and mix their paints. The word can also mean the range of colors an artist or designer uses.
From French 'palette', a small shovel or blade, related to 'pale' meaning 'shovel' or 'spade'. It came to mean the flat board painters hold in one hand while they work.
A palette started out as a kind of 'little shovel', not an art tool. The leap from a tiny shovel to a painter’s color board shows how often language reuses old shapes for new jobs.
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.