patten

Etymology 1

From Middle English patyn, patin, pateyn, from Old French patin, from patte (“paw, hoof”), from Latin patta, of imitative origin.

noun

1. Any of various types of footwear with thick soles, often used to elevate the foot, especially wooden clogs.
2. (now historical) One of various wooden attachments used to lift a shoe above wet or muddy ground.
   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
   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 Goloshes, clogs, cork-soles, and other inventions, have quite superseded the noisy old resource ; and I am not sure that the modern appliances could make out a perfect claim to superiority over the old, for the pattens not only kept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
   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
   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. (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. 1795, D. Walker, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Hertford, page 42
   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
4. (now Britain 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.

verb

1. (intransitive) To go about wearing pattens.

Etymology 2

Variant forms.

noun

1. Obsolete form of paten.