Noun: pat
Sample Sentences
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We heard a pat on the door.
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Give Mary a pat on the shoulder to get her attention.
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It looked like a tessellated work of pats of butter. [1842 December – 1844 July, Charles Dickens, chapter 45, in The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1844, →OCLC:]
Nouns inflected like pat
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
From Middle English pat (“a blow, stroke”), alteration (with loss of medial l) of *plat (> Scots plat (“a blow, buffet”)), from Old English plætt (“a sounding blow, a smack”), from Proto-West Germanic *platt (“a smack, slap, blow”), from Proto-Germanic *plat- (“to strike, beat”), from Proto-Indo-European *blod-, *bled- (“to strike, beat”). Cognate with Middle Dutch plat (“a smack, blow, slap”), Middle Low German plat (“a smack, blow, beating”), Middle High German plaz, blaz (“a resounding blow, bang, crash”). For loss of l, compare patch for platch; pate for plate, etc. See plat. See: Middle English Nouns '
pat', Old English Nouns '
plætt'.