patten

plural pattens

1. Any of various types of footwear with thick soles, often used to elevate the foot, especially wooden clogs.First known use 14th c.

   Nobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in pattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I don't know with what object, and I don't think she did.

   1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 4, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC

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   I went and told part of the excise money till twelve o’clock, and then called on my wife and took her to Mr. Pierces, she in the way being exceedingly troubled with a pair of new pattens, and I vexed to go so slow, it being late.

   1660 February 2 (date written; Gregorian calendar), Samuel Pepys, Mynors Bright, transcriber, “January 24th, 1659–1660”, in Henry B[enjamin] Wheatley, editor, The Diary of Samuel Pepys […], volume (please specify |volume=I to X), London: George Bell & Sons […]; Cambridge: Deighton Bell & Co., published 1893–1899, →OCLC

   Tom Freckle, the smith's son, was the next victim to her rage. He was an ingenious workman, and made excellent pattens; nay, the very patten with which he was knocked down was his own workmanship.

   1749, Henry Fielding, chapter VIII, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC, book IV

   "I fear there is a chase; I think I hear three or four galloping together; I am sure I hear more horses than one." / "Pooh, pooh, it is the wench of the house that is clattering to the well in her pattens; [...]."

   1819, Jedediah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter V, in Tales of My Landlord, Third Series. […], volume I (The Bride of Lammermoor), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, page 150

2. historicalOne of various wooden attachments used to lift a shoe above wet or muddy ground.First known use form 16th c.

   Pair of Woman's Pattens, c. 1700-80 A pair of woman's pattens, wooden soles riveted to wrought iron platforms with straps of brown leather lined with off-white wool.

   1998, Sharon Ann Burnston, Linda A Scurlock, Chester County Historical Society (West Chester, Pa.), Fitting & proper

   5 more examples

   They presented the most extraordinary and comic aspect imaginable, with their shaven heads and long beard; (the heads of all Mussulmen are shaved quite bare, with the exception of a tuft on the very top, which is left for the angel of the tomb on the day of judgment, say they, to grasp and carry them up to heaven by;) besides these, other objects are seen wrapped up in towels, with black grisled beards tickling their breasts, and tottering along on a high pair of pattens or rather stilts, at the imminent danger, as it appears, of breaking their necks.

   1838, Charles Greenstreet Addison, Damascus and Palmyra: A Journey to the East - Volume 2, page 64

   Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking over the wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the yard—Mrs. Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt.

   1845, Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth

   The doors are many-belled: and crowds of dirty children form endless groups about the steps: or around the shell-fish dealers’ trays in these courts; whereof the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are drabbled with a never-failing mud.

   1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 43, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1849–1850, →OCLC

   I suppose that those who ramble beyond railways may yet come upon females underpinned with the useful and once indispensable pattens, but for a long time it has not been my lot to look upon a pair. Goloshes, clogs, cork-soles, and other inventions, have quite superseded the noisy old resource ; and I am not sure that the modern appliances could make out a perfect claim to superiority over the old, for the pattens not only kept the feet dry, they also, by raising the wearer from one to two inches, kept the garments out of the mire.

   1886, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, page 739

   The servant, who wasn't able to reach the flying coach, picked the patten [translating chianiello] up from the ground and brought it to the king, telling him what had happened.

   2007, Giambattista Basile, translated by Nancy L. Canepa, Tale of Tales, Penguin, page 60

3. obsoleteA circular wooden plank attached to a horse's foot to prevent it from sinking into a bog while plowing.First known use 18th–19th c.

   Some trials have been made in Ireland to put pattens on bullocks instead of horses, for ploughing on bog.

   1814, The Fourth Report of the Commissioners (Ireland) 4 November, 1813 - 30 July, 1814, page 215

   1 more example

   At and in the neighbourhood of North Meoks, near Ormskirk in Lancashire, there is a whole country of peat, and how deep this soil is God only knows, for the horses which plough thereon wear pattens to keep them from sinking to the bellies: here I was not long ago deluded, by my ignorance of the country and a team in pattens, to attempt riding over ploughed ground to inquire my way.

   1795, D. Walker, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Hertford, page 42

4. UKdialectalAn ice skate.First known use 17th c.
5. historicalAn iron hoop attached to a person's boot in cases of hip-joint disease.
6. The base of a pillar.

present singular third person pattens · participle present pattening · participle past pattened · past pattened

1. intransitiveTo go about wearing pattens.

plural pattens

1. obsoleteObsolete form of paten.

plural Pattens

1. countableuncountableA surname.
2. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Thomas County, Georgia, United States.
3. countableuncountableA town, village, and census-designated place therein, in Penobscot County, Maine, United States.