• (GA) enPR: băt'-n, IPA: /ˈbætən/

batten (battens, present participle battening; past and past participle battened)

1. (intransitive) To become better; improve in condition, especially by feeding.
2. (intransitive, figurative) To feed (on); to revel (in).
   • 1890, Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, ch. XIV:

     The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

3. (intransitive) To thrive by feeding; grow fat; feed oneself gluttonously.

   • The pampered monarch lay battening in ease.

   • Skeptics, with a taste for carrion, who batten on the hideous facts in history […]

4. (intransitive) To thrive, prosper, or live in luxury, especially at the expense of others; fare sumptuously.

   Robber barons who battened on the poor

   • 2015 by Gerard Menuhin in "Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil"

     The densest webs are in Tel Aviv and New York. It is from there, via their venal henchmen in Washington, London, Berlin, etc. that the fattest spiders batten on the misery of a large part of the world's population.

5. (intransitive) To gratify a morbid appetite or craving; gloat.
6. (transitive) To improve by feeding; fatten; make fat or cause to thrive due to plenteous feeding.
   • 1637, John Milton, “Lycidas”, in Poems of Mr. John Milton, […] , London: Printed by Ruth Raworth for Humphrey Moſely,  […], published 1645, OCLC 606951673 ↗:

     battening our flocks

7. (transitive) To fertilize or enrich, as land.

• battle

• German: gedeihen
• Spanish: mejorar

• German: fett werden, sich mästen
• Russian: жире́ть
• Spanish: cebarse

• German: schmarotzen, gedeihen
• Russian: нажива́ться
• Spanish: aprovecharse, medrar

• German: sich an etwas weiden, sich ergötzen

• German: mästen
• Russian: отка́рмливать
• Spanish: cebar

batten (plural battens)

1. A thin strip of wood used in construction to hold members of a structure together or to provide a fixing point.
2. (nautical) A long strip of wood, metal, fibreglass etc., used for various purposes aboard ship, especially one inserted in a pocket sewn on the sail in order to keep the sail flat.
3. In stagecraft, a long pipe, usually metal, affixed to the ceiling or fly system in a theater.
4. The movable bar of a loom, which strikes home or closes the threads of a woof.

• German: Latte, Leiste, Dachlatte, Diele
• Russian: ре́йка

• German: Latte, Segellatte
• Spanish: filete

• German: Lade, Weberlade

batten (battens, present participle battening; past and past participle battened)

1. To furnish with battens.
2. (nautical) To fasten or secure a hatch etc using battens.

• German: Schotten dicht machen
• Russian: задраивать

1. Surname