plates

(one's) plate

informal One's schedule of imminent or pressing matters. I'm sorry, I've got too much on my plate at the moment to help with your project. We had an extremely busy period just before the holidays, but our plate is pretty clear now.
See also: plate

plates

slang The feet. The term comes from rhyming slang in which "plates" is short for "plates of meat," which rhymes with "feet." Primarily heard in UK. I've been on me plates all day—can we sit down for a while?
See also: plate
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • (one's) plate
  • plate
  • one minute to midnight
  • hang over
  • hang over (someone or something)
  • hung over
  • brief
  • brief (one) on (someone or something)
  • pull (someone or something) out of the fire
  • pull out of the fire
References in classic literature
He proposed to fix the plate within two hundred yards of the gun.
In one well-marked instance, I put the comb back into the hive, and allowed the bees to go on working for a short time, and again examined the cell, and I found that the rhombic plate had been completed, and had become perfectly flat: it was absolutely impossible, from the extreme thinness of the little rhombic plate, that they could have effected this by gnawing away the convex side; and I suspect that the bees in such cases stand in the opposed cells and push and bend the ductile and warm wax (which as I have tried is easily done) into its proper intermediate plane, and thus flatten it.
All HE'S got to do is to write on the plate and throw it out.
The excellent drawing-room furniture by the best makers; the rare and famous wines selected, regardless of cost, and with the well-known taste of the purchaser; the rich and complete set of family plate had been sold on the previous days.
I was a great way out of the hurry now, and so I went on, clear of anybody's inquiry, and brought the bundle of plate, which was very considerable, straight home, and gave it to my old governess.
It is with horror that I tell what a treasure I found there; 'tis enough to say, that besides most of the family plate, which was considerable, I found a gold chain, an old-fashioned thing, the locket of which was broken, so that I suppose it had not been used some years, but the gold was not the worse for that; also a little box of burying-rings, the lady's wedding-ring, and some broken bits of old lockets of gold, a gold watch, and a purse with about
By the by, I was forgetting the silver plate. What is the value of that which I have?"
Faucheux, you will take away with you both the gold and silver plate. I can assign, as a pretext, that I wish it remodelled on patterns more in accordance with my own taste.
"That plate - the prisoner has written something on it, has he not?"
Polly was flustered, and she thought 'Erb a regular caution, you never knew what ideas 'e'd get in 'is 'ead next; but she got a plate and wiped it quickly with her apron, then took a new knife and fork from the chest of drawers, where her best cutlery rested among her best clothes.
He told her that he had been enchanted by a spiteful fairy, who had changed him into a frog; and that he had been fated so to abide till some princess should take him out of the spring, and let him eat from her plate, and sleep upon her bed for three nights.
Certain big, heavy vehicles, built on the model of the Podsnap plate, took away the heavy articles of guests weighing ever so much; and the less valuable articles got away after their various manners; and the Podsnap plate was put to bed.
Just as a photographic plate receives a different impression of a cluster of stars when a telescope is part of the intervening medium, so a brain receives a different impression when an eye and an optic nerve are part of the intervening medium.
'Can't you say who won the Helter-Skelter Plate when you're asked the question civilly?'
She was idly arranging her little morsels of ham in a pattern on her plate. Launcelot Linzie, still more idly, was looking at the pattern.