Other forms: patterns, patterned, patterning
A pattern is a design that repeats — the same shape again and again across a surface. Stripes on a shirt, flowers on the wallpaper, the diamonds down the front of a jumper.
The word reaches well past cloth. A pattern is any regular way things happen: a sleep pattern, weather patterns, a pattern of behaviour a doctor spots after three visits. In sewing, a pattern is the paper template you pin to the fabric and cut round — a thing you hold, not a picture. As a verb, to pattern one thing on another is to copy its shape: the new library was patterned on one in Helsinki. Careful with the meaning, though: a pattern is not a good example to follow — that is a model.
1nounpatternA design in which shapes or colours repeat.~49%
“The curtains had a pattern of small blue leaves.”
2nounregularA regular way in which something happens or is done.~42%
“His sleep pattern fell apart after the night shifts started.”
3nounpaperA paper shape used as a guide for cutting cloth.~7%
“She pinned the paper pattern to the fabric and cut round it.”
4verbfollowTo make something follow the shape or plan of something else.~2%
“The new library was patterned on one he had seen in Helsinki.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
pattern is a design.
Pattern and patron are one word that split in two. Middle English patron, from Old French patron and Medieval Latin patrōnus, meant an example or model as well as a protector, since the thing you copy stands over the copy. English shifted the stress and the vowel, left the protecting sense with patron, and kept the copying sense in pattern.
Medieval Latin
patrōnus — patron
Old French
patron
Middle English
patron — patron; example
English, today
pattern
From earlier patten, paterne, from Middle English patron (“patron; example”), from Old French patron, from Medieval Latin patrōnus (“patron”). a doublet of padrone and patron and Patronus and patroon.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA