rattan

plural rattans · alternative ratan

1. countableuncountableAny of several species of climbing palm of the genus Calamus.
2. uncountableThe plant used as a material for making furniture, baskets etc.

   It took Elwood an hour to find Mr. Gladwell, who sat in a big rattan chair at the edge of the sweet potato fields.

   2019, Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys, Fleet, page 180

   1 more example

   Then, how comparatively sweet was everything on board - no paint, no tar, no new rope, (vilest of smells to the qualmish!) no grease, or oil, or varnish; but instead of these, bamboo and rattan, and coir rope and palm thatch; pure vegetable fibres, which smell pleasantly if they smell at all, and recall quiet scenes in the green and shady forest.

   1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 162

3. broadlycountableuncountableA cane made from this material.

   […]the rattan is still a valued instrument of discipline[…]

   2008, Jean-François Bayart, Andrew Brown, Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalization

   2 more examples

   He who first acts as striker asks the other how many blows of the rattan he will bear on his forearm without crying out.

   1906, Walter William Skeat, Charles Otto Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula

   “My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan. ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”

   1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter IV, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

present singular third person rattans · participle present rattaning · participle past rattaned · past rattaned · alternative ratan

1. transitiveTo beat with a rattan cane.

   Meanwhile Captain Colville rattaned Pearson very severely […]

   1915, Edward Walford, George Latimer Apperson, The Antiquary, volume 51, page 56

plural Rattans

1. A surname.