patten

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patten, patand, patin

1. The base of a column or pillar.
2. A base or a groundsill which supports a column, post, or pillar.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Architecture and Construction. Copyright © 2003 by McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
References in classic literature ?
The person I had seen in pattens, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and skirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will between them.
The prospect of his departure filled Felicite with despair, and in order to bid him farewell, on Wednesday night, after Madame's dinner, she put on her pattens and trudged the four miles that separated Pont- l'Eveque from Honfleur.
The umbrellas in the passage had been heaped into the little corner outside the back-parlour door; the bonnet and shawl of the landlady's servant had been removed from the bannisters; there were not more than two pairs of pattens on the street-door mat; and a kitchen candle, with a very long snuff, burned cheerfully on the ledge of the staircase window.
As there was a board outside, which acquainted the public that servants-of-all-work were perpetually in waiting to be hired from ten till four, Nicholas knew at once that some half-dozen strong young women, each with pattens and an umbrella, who were sitting upon a form in one corner, were in attendance for that purpose: especially as the poor things looked anxious and weary.
The latter good soul was a gaunt, angular woman, who, with an old black bonnet on the top of her head, the strings dangling about her shoulders, and her gown tucked through her pocket-holes, went clattering about the dairy, cheese-room, and yard, in high pattens. Charity was some sort of niece of the old lady's, and was consequently free of the farmhouse and garden, into which she could not resist going for the purposes of gossip and flirtation with the heir-apparent, who was a dawdling fellow, never out at work as he ought to have been.
The Pattens grew apart, and their marriage dissolved, touching off an emotional crisis that drove him to therapy.
On a midsummer afternoon, Patten settled back into a comfortable couch in the living room of his stone Colonial off Massachusetts Avenue in Worcester.
Today's youthful Pattens and Clarkes would surely join Labour.
The book still reads well and its author, now paunchy and past 50, remains a very interesting figure: Chris Patten.
The Pattens arrived in the Philippines yesterday after sailing from Hong Kong on the royal yacht Britannia.