Patent coats, the first coat, with the pockets inside the skirt, were so termed.
Patter, a speech or discourse, a pompous street oration, a judge’s summing up, a trial. Ancient word for muttering. Probably from the Latin, PATERNOSTER, 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 the 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.
Patteran, a gipsy trail, made by throwing down a handful of grass occasionally, especially where they have turned off from the main road.
Patter-crib, a flash house.
Patterer, one of a race now nearly defunct, who cried last dying speeches, &c., in the streets. The term is also applied to those who help off their wares by long harangues in the public thoroughfares. These men, to use their own term, “are the aristocracy of the street sellers,” and despise the costermongers for their ignorance, boasting that they live by their intellect, which, as they do not live wonderfully well, is no particularly wise boast.
Pattern, a common vulgar phrase for “patent.”
Paul Pry, an inquisitive person. From the well-known comedy.
Paw, the hand. Paw-cases, gloves. Boots are in some parts of Ireland called “gloves for the feet.”
Pay, to beat a person, or “serve him 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,—an expressive phrase of which no one seems to know the origin. Shakspeare uses PAY in the sense of to beat or thrash.