patten

noun

1. Any of various types of footwear with thick soles, often used to elevate the foot, especially wooden clogs.

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “"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; [...]."”

   “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.”

2. (historical)One of various wooden attachments used to lift a shoe above wet or muddy ground.

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “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.”

3. (obsolete)A circular wooden plank attached to a horse's foot to prevent it from sinking into a bog while plowing.

   “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.”

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

4. (British, dialectal)An ice skate.
5. (historical)An iron hoop attached to a person's boot in cases of hip-joint disease.
6. The base of a pillar.
7. (alt-of, obsolete)Obsolete form of paten.

verb

1. (intransitive)To go about wearing pattens.

name

1. (countable, uncountable)A surname.
2. (countable, uncountable)An unincorporated community in Thomas County, Georgia, United States.
3. (countable, uncountable)A town, village, and census-designated place therein, in Penobscot County, Maine, United States.