• (British) IPA: /ˈpat(ə)n/

patten (plural pattens)

1. Any of various types of footwear with thick soles, often used to elevate the foot, especially wooden clogs. [from 14th c.]
   • 1660, Samuel Pepys, Diary, 24 Jan 1660:

     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.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, chapter VIII, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. In Six Volumes, volume (please specify ), London: Printed by A[ndrew] Millar, […], OCLC 928184292 ↗, book IV:

   • 1819, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter V, in Tales of My Landlord, Third Series. [...] In Four Volumes, volume I (The Bride of Lammermoor), Edinburgh: Printed [by James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], OCLC 277985465 ↗, page 150 ↗:

     "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; [...]."

   • 1853, Charles Dickens, Bleak House, ch 4:

     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. (now, historical) One of various wooden attachments used to lift a shoe above wet or muddy ground. [form 16th c.]
   • 1845, Charles Dickens, The Cricket on the Hearth:

     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.

   • 2007, Nancy L. Canepa, translating Giambattista Basile, Tale of Tales, Penguin 2007, p. 60:

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

3. (obsolete) A circular wooden plank attached to a horse's foot to prevent it from sinking into a bog while plowing. [18th–19th c.]
4. (now, Britain dialectal) An ice skate. [from 17th c.]
5. (historical) An iron hoop attached to a person's boot in cases of hip-joint disease.
6. The base of a pillar.

patten (pattens, present participle pattening; past and past participle pattened)

1. (intransitive) To go about wearing pattens.

patten (plural pattens)

1. Obsolete form of paten#English|paten.

1. Surname