platform

A raised stage from which speeches are made and on which musical and other performances are made.

• Always, whether in the pulpit or on the platform, as in private conversation, there is an absolute simplicity about the man and his words; a simplicity, an earnestness, a complete honesty.

A raised floor for any purpose, e.g. for workmen during construction, or formerly for military cannon.

A place or an opportunity to express one's opinion.figuratively

• This new talk show will give a platform to everyday men and women.

Something that allows an enterprise to advance.figuratively

• Hidgson may actually feel England could have scored even more but this was the perfect first step on the road to Rio in 2014 and the ideal platform for the second qualifier against Ukraine at Wembley on Tuesday.

A political stance on a broad set of issues, which are called planks.figuratively

• The Communist Party and its candidates stand on the following platform, which expresses the immediate interests of the majority of the population of our country.
• Surely there is nothing strange or new or threatening about such a platform. It will distress only those who have the essentially un-American view that change itself is frightening and should be avoided at all costs.

A raised structure or other area alongside rails or a driveway alongside which vehicles stop to take in and discharge passengers.

• People on the platforms / Waiting for the trains / I can hear their hearts a-beatin’ / Like pendulums swinging on chains

A specific stopping place on one of multiple tracks at a station, numbered or otherwise named.

• “Well, there you are, boy. Platform nine — platform ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don’t seem to have built it yet, do they?”

Ellipsis of platform shoe (“a kind of high shoe with an extra layer between the inner and outer soles”).abbreviationalt-ofellipsis

• Now open the album cover! How fabulous! The four of them [the Pointer Sisters] in platforms of death, tacky gowns, and "reflections of."
• Walk to Shazzer's from polling station was hideous walk of shame. Also cannot wear platforms now as feet too crippled so will look short.

A software system used to provide online services to clients, such as social media, e-commerce, or cloud computing.Internet

• Finance is seldom romantic. But the idea of peer-to-peer lending comes close. This is an industry that brings together individual savers and lenders on online platforms. Those that want to borrow are matched with those that want to lend.
• In fact, wealth and power are shifting to those who control the platforms on which all of us create, consume, and connect.

A particular operating system or environment such as a database or other specific software; a particular type of computer or microprocessor, used for running other software.

• That program runs on the X Window System platform.

To furnish with or shape into a platformtransitive

• […] upon a smiling knoll platformed by Nature […]

To place on, or as if on, a platform.transitive

• And this dog was satisfied / If a pale thin hand would glide / Down his dewlaps sloping / Which he pushed his nose within, / After—platforming his chin / On the palm left open.

To place a train alongside a station platform.

• There he was welcomed onboard Vivarail's new three-car battery-powered train and Porterbrook's HydroFLEX hydrogen-powered train, which had been platformed side-by-side to showcase the potential of these low-carbon alternative technologies.

To include in a political platformtransitive

• Among them I scarcely can plot out one truth / Plain enough to be platformed by some voting sleuth / And paraded before the precinct polling-booth.

To publish or make visible; to provide a platform for (a topic etc.).transitive

• We want to platform the larger, unspoken issue of menstrual health and hygiene of women at work, and how we as a society need to start taking cognizance of it and start adopting measures to help our women workforce navigate it with ease.
• If Buckley were still alive today, could a university get away with platforming him in a debate?

To open (a film) in a small number of theaters before a broader release in order to generate enthusiasm.transitive

• Each of these films will be "platformed," the industry term to describe the strategy of opening a movie first in a limited number of theaters to give it an aura of exclusivity, then having its appeal build through word of mouth.

To form a plan of; to model; to lay out.obsoletetransitive

• I have ſaid what is meet to ſome who do not think it for the eaſe of their inconſequent Opinions, to grant that Church-Diſcipline is platform'd in the Bible, but that it is left to the diſcretion of Men.