A doctor's word. To palpate a part of the body is to check it with the hands — usually the fingers — by pressing and feeling, not by looking. A doctor may palpate your belly to see if something is swollen, palpate a lump to feel if it is soft or hard, or palpate a pulse. It is a careful, trained kind of touching, done on purpose to learn something. You almost never hear ordinary people say it about ordinary life; it belongs in clinics, textbooks, and medical notes. Though actually, the idea itself is simple: the hands can find things the eyes cannot.