any of various kinds of footwear, as a wooden shoe, a shoe with a wooden sole, a chopine, etc., to protect the feet from mud or wetness.
a separate sole attached to a shoe or boot for this purpose.
Building Trades. any stand or support, especially one of a number resting on unbroken ground as a substitute for a foundation.
1350–1400; Middle English paten < Middle French patin wooden shoe, perhaps derivative of pate paw
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
And she clattered abruptly away, and Henrietta was left to patten her road to the pump and back, and afterwards to finish her toilette in what shivering comfort she might.
From Starvecrow Farm by Weyman, Stanley J.
There is a most ungallant old riddle, "Why is a wife like a patten?"
From Two Centuries of Costume in America, Volume 1 (1620-1820) by Earle, Alice Morse
It lay in the wooden patten, looking up at her with its two bright eyes, and chirping contentedly as she stroked its soft feathers.
From Good Stories for Holidays by Olcott, Frances Jenkins
Gay wrote in his Trivia, 1715:-- "The patten now supports each frugal dame That from the blue-eyed Patty takes the name."
From Two Centuries of Costume in America, Volume 1 (1620-1820) by Earle, Alice Morse
Closing her eyes as she made this remark, in the acuteness of her commiseration for Betsey's patients, she forgot to open them again until she dropped a patten.
From Martin Chuzzlewit by Dickens, Charles
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
