palato-

Palate.

Latin palatum, palate.

This is used in medicine to form adjectives that refer to the palate plus another part of the body, as in palato-pharyngeal, the palate and pharynx, and palato-glossal, palate and tongue. (These and other examples are often written unhyphenated.) Other medical terms using it include palatoplasty, plastic surgery on the palate, and palatoschisis (Greek skhisma, cleft), the formal name for a cleft palate.

Some other terms are used in phonetics, such as palato-alveolar (also seen unhyphenated and as the reversed alveopalatal), of a consonant sounded with a constriction from the alveolar ridge to the palate, and palatography, a technique for recording the position of the tongue during articulation from its contact with the hard palate.