Definition of "metate" [‖me•ta•te]

• A stone block with a shallow concave surface, used with a mano for grinding corn or other grains. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "In rural Mexico, and among very traditional cooks, the metate is still used to grind corn for home made tortillas, which taste so much better than the commercial variety."
• "I still wince whenever Roberto reminds me that for centuries, the process of making mole culminated not with the whiz of the blender among the most useful tools in the modern Mexican kitchen, but with painstaking grinding on a shallow, rudimentary stone mortar called a metate."
• "Late that day, Hannah knelt beside the large, flat stone called a metate, grinding cornmeal."