A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1083 entries
metate
A concave stone slab used for grinding corn, worn smooth by generations of use with a hand-held grinding stone called a mano. Found in archaeological sites across the Southwest, often in alcoves where the light is good and the wind is blocked.
Etymology
From Spanish “metate,” borrowed from Nahuatl “metlatl” (grinding stone), a compound rooted in Nahuatl’s broader vocabulary for stone-grinding tools (compare “molcajete,” the mortar). The word entered Spanish during the colonial period and spread through Mexico and the American Southwest along with the tool itself, which predates European contact by millennia.