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Batten   /bˈætən/   Listen
noun
Batten  n.  A strip of sawed stuff, or a scantling; as,
(a)
pl. (Com. & Arch.) Sawed timbers about 7 by 2 1/2 inches and not less than 6 feet long.
(b)
(Naut.) A strip of wood used in fastening the edges of a tarpaulin to the deck, also around masts to prevent chafing.
(c)
A long, thin strip used to strengthen a part, to cover a crack, etc.
Batten door (Arch.), a door made of boards of the whole length of the door, secured by battens nailed crosswise.



Batten  n.  The movable bar of a loom, which strikes home or closes the threads of a woof.



verb
Batten  v. t.  (past & past part. battened; pres. part. battening)  
1.
To make fat by plenteous feeding; to fatten. "Battening our flocks."
2.
To fertilize or enrich, as land.



Batten  v. t.  To furnish or fasten with battens.
To batten down, to fasten down with battens, as the tarpaulin over the hatches of a ship during a storm.



Batten  v. i.  To grow fat; to grow fat in ease and luxury; to glut one's self. "The pampered monarch lay battening in ease." "Skeptics, with a taste for carrion, who batten on the hideous facts in history, persecutions, inquisitions."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Batten" Quotes from Famous Books



... enormous load Fuel by which to sup. Loud crash'd the thorns 270 Which down he cast before the cavern's mouth, To whose interior nooks we trembling flew. At once he drove into his spacious cave His batten'd flock, all those which gave him milk, But all the males, both rams and goats, he left Abroad, excluded from the cavern-yard. Upheaving, next, a rocky barrier huge To his cave's mouth, he thrust it home. That weight Not all ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... to Colonel Baum, who, with about a thousand Germans, Indians, Canadians, and refugee loyalists, started out from camp on his maraud, on the eleventh, halted at Batten-Kill on the twelfth, and reached Cambridge on the thirteenth. He was furnished with Tory guides, who knew the country well, and with instructions looking to a long ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... a lifting of the eyebrows, and a pursing of the mouth, in an anxiety not altogether burlesque. He knew himself the prey of any one who chose to batten on him, and his hospitality was subject to frightful abuse. Perhaps Mr. Norton has somewhere told how, when he asked if a certain person who had been outstaying his time was not a dreadful bore, Longfellow answered, with angelic patience, "Yes; but then you know ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the general name for a curtain of canvas—painted to represent some scene and stretched on a batten—a long, thick strip of wood—pocketed in the lower end to give the canvas the required stability. Sets of lines are tied to the upper batten on which the drop is tied and thus the drop can be raised or lowered to its place on the stage. ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... away. But this was long before you took your malaria of mosquitoes, and we minded them no more than little children mind them to-day. Indeed, I can keep peacefully still even now to watch a mosquito batten and fatten upon my hand, to see his ravenous, pale abdomen swell to a vast smug redness—that physiological, or psychological, moment for which you wait ere you ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris


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