Other forms: pats
To pat something is to touch it lightly a few times with a flat hand. Patting a dog on the head, patting your pockets for your keys, patting a baby's back until the burp arrives.
Pat is a noun as well, and a pat on the back has become the standard way of saying well done. In the kitchen a pat of butter is one small square, the kind that turns up on a saucer in a hotel. You pat something dry with a towel rather than rubbing it, and police pat someone down when they search their clothes. If you have a speech down pat you know it perfectly, while a pat answer is one that arrives too smoothly to be trusted. Note the double letter in patted and patting; one t would be a different word altogether.
1verbpatTo touch someone or something gently and repeatedly with a flat hand.
“She patted the seat beside her and I sat down.”
2nounlightA light touch with a flat hand.
“He gave the horse a pat on the neck.”
3verbpressTo press something gently with a cloth to dry it.
“Pat the fish dry before it goes in the pan.”
4nounsmallA small flat lump of butter.
“There was a pat of butter melting on the toast.”
5adjectivequickToo quick and neat to be believed.
“It was a pat answer and nobody in the room believed it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
pat is a gentle touch.
A pat used to hurt. Middle English pat meant a blow or a stroke, and it is the word plat with the l knocked out of it — Old English plaett, a sounding blow, a smack. The Proto-Germanic root behind it, plat-, meant to strike or beat. Somewhere on the road to the dog's head, the smack softened into a stroke.
Proto-Indo-European
*blod-
Proto-Germanic
*plat- — to strike, beat
Proto-West Germanic
*platt — a smack, slap, blow
Old English
plætt — a sounding blow, a smack
Middle English
pat — a blow, stroke
English, today
pat
Built from
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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA