English

Verb

batten ‎(third-person singular simple present battens, present participle battening, simple past and past participle battened)

1. (intransitive) To become better; improve in condition, especially by feeding.
2. (intransitive) 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.
   • Garth

     The pampered monarch lay battening in ease.

   • Emerson

     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

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.
   • Milton

     battening our flocks

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

Derived terms

• battner

Related terms

• battle

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English bataunt, batent ‎(“finished board”), from Old French batent ‎(“beating”)

Noun

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.

Translations

Verb

batten ‎(third-person singular simple present battens, present participle battening, simple past and past participle battened)

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

Derived terms

• batten down
• batten down the hatches

Translations

l|

References

• FM 55-501 Marine Crewman’s Handbook

German

Alternative forms

• baten

Etymology

Unsettled. A comparable form is synonymous Dutch baten, which pertains to the Germanic root at hand in English batten and better. At least a secondary relation with this Dutch verb seems certain. However, its regular cognate is Old High German bazzen ‎(“to batten”), which would have led to modern *bassen, bässen. Mere borrowing from Low German or Dutch is unlikely since the verb has -t- in western Upper German and a corresponding -d- in many dialects of West Central German. Possibly two distinct roots have been merged.

Verb

batten ‎(third-person singular simple present battet, past tense battete, past participle gebattet, auxiliary haben)

1. (obsolete, western Germany) to be useful, to be of use, to help

Synonyms

• nutzen, nützen