means The roof of the mouth, or—more usefully—a person's sense of taste and their capacity to appreciate flavors.

from From Latin palatum, the roof of the mouth. The Romans, oddly enough, treated the palate as the seat of taste long before anyone understood the tongue's true role, so the word for that bony ceiling drifted naturally into meaning 'the faculty of taste' itself. It reached English through Old French in the medieval period, carrying both the literal anatomy and the figurative refinement we still hear when someone speaks of a 'discerning palate.'