Patty

How to spell patty

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce patty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does patty mean?

1. nounA small, flat, round cake of minced or shaped food, such as meat or fish, usually cooked by frying or grilling.

Patty in a sentence

• The chef shaped each beef patty by hand before grilling it.

• She placed a salmon patty on the warm bun and added some sauce.

Where does patty come from?

Language of origin: French

Patty entered English in the early 1700s as an anglicised version of the French word pâté, which originally meant a paste or a small pie of finely chopped meat. The French pâté in turn descends from the Old French paste, the same root that gives us the English word 'paste', and ultimately from the Late Latin pasta, meaning 'dough' or 'a small square of paste'. As English speakers reshaped pâté to fit their own spelling habits, they doubled the t and added the familiar -y ending, turning a French dish into a comfortably English-looking little word. Over time the meaning broadened from a small pie to any small, flat, round cake of minced or shaped food, which is why we now speak of a beef patty or a fish patty. The doubled t is the spelling trap: it echoes the short 'a' sound and the same pattern seen in 'batty' and 'catty', rather than the single t of the French original.

How the word is built

• patty (from French pâté: paste/pie)
• -y (noun, diminutive sense)