Pat

How to spell pat

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce pat

What does pat mean?

1. verbTo touch or tap something gently and repeatedly with the flat of the hand.
2. nounA light, affectionate touch or tap with the hand.
3. nounA small shaped portion or lump of butter.

Pat in a sentence

• verb

  She leaned down to pat the dog before leaving for work.

• noun

  A friendly pat on the shoulder told her the interview had gone well.

• noun

  She placed a pat of butter on top of the steaming jacket potato.

• verb

  He would always pat his coat pocket to check for his keys.

• noun

  The coach gave each player a pat on the back as they left the field.

• noun

  The recipe calls for a generous pat of butter melted into the sauce.

Where does pat come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Pat is a short, plain English word that first appears in the Middle English period, around the 1300s, and it almost certainly began life as an imitative or echoic word, that is, a word coined to mimic the soft slapping sound it describes. Its earliest recorded uses refer to a light blow or a tap, and the noun and verb senses grew up side by side from that single percussive idea. Over time the meaning softened from a sharp strike to the gentle, affectionate touch we mean today when we pat a dog or a shoulder. The culinary sense, a small shaped lump of butter, developed because such a portion was traditionally patted into shape between wooden boards. The adjectival sense, as in a pat answer or knowing something off pat, comes from the idea of something delivered as neatly and readily as if it had been smoothed into place by hand.

How the word is built

• pat (single root, of imitative origin; no prefix or suffix)