I was, until my retirement, a film professor (see http://www.film-prof.com). My students had to do a few papers that analyzed some aspect of a film. Some chose to write about color, and I’ve often been treated to an analysis on pallets, palates, and palettes. Of course, only one of those is correct; the other two, to be fair, are amusing to visualize, and provide the occasional guffaw.

This is a palette:

It’s what painters use to hold their paints. It also refers to the range of colors in an image or film.

This is a palate:

This is also referred to as the roof of your mouth.

And finally, this is a pallet:

A pallet can also be a straw mattress or a makeshift bed.

My students, of course, usually meant “palette” when they wrote, because they were writing about the use of color in a film.

The biggest thing to remember is that there are three words that sound exactly the same but mean different things. And in the spirit of full disclosure, I confess that sometimes I have to look up the word to make sure I’m writing down the right one!