PATENT COAT, a coat with the pockets inside the skirts,—termed PATENT from the difficulty of picking them.
PATTER, a speech or discourse, a pompous street oration, a judge’s summing up, a trial. Ancient word for muttering. Probably from the Latin, PATER NOSTER, or Lord’s Prayer. This was said, before the Reformation, in a low voice by the priest, until he came to, “and lead us not into temptation,” to which the choir responded, “but deliver us from evil.” In our reformed Prayer Book this was altered, and the Lord’s Prayer directed to be said “with a loud voice.”—Dr. Pusey takes this view of the derivation in his Letter to the Bishop of London, p. 78, 1851. Scott uses the word twice in Ivanhoe and the Bride of Lammermoor.
PATTER, to talk. Patter flash, to speak the language of thieves, talk cant.
PATTERERS, men who cry last dying speeches, &c., in the streets, and those who help off their wares by long harangues in the public thoroughfares. These men, to use their own term “are the haristocracy of the street sellers,” and despise the costermongers for their ignorance, boasting that they live by their intellect. The public, they say, do not expect to receive from them an equivalent for their money—they pay to hear them talk.—Mayhew. Patterers were formerly termed “mountebanks.”
PAWS, hands.
PAY, to beat a person, or “serve them out.” Originally a nautical term, meaning to stop the seams of a vessel with pitch (French, POIX); “here’s the d——l to PAY, and no pitch hot,” said when any catastrophe occurs which there is no means of averting; “to PAY over face and eyes, as the cat did the monkey;” “to PAY through the nose,” to give a ridiculous price.—whence the origin? Shakespere uses PAY in the sense of to beat, or thrash.
PEACH, to inform against or betray. Webster states that impeach is now the modification mostly used, and that PEACH is confined principally to the conversation of thieves and the lower orders.
PEACOCK HORSE, amongst undertakers, is one with a showy tail and mane, and holds its head up well,—che va favorreggiando, &c., Italian.
PEAKING, remnants of cloth.
PECK, food; “PECK and booze,” meat and drink.—Lincolnshire. Ancient cant, PEK, meat.