Pat n.
1. a generic term for an Irishman; also as a term of address or nickname.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | ‘The Irish Schoolmaster’ in Banquet of Thalia 7: To booze away, Old Pat would say, / And the devil take to-morrow. | |
| ‘The Irish Angler’ in Sporting Mag. Dec. I 149/1: A smart show’r of rain falling, Pat, in a jiffey, / Crept under the arch of a bridge. | |
| Sporting Mag. Oct. XVII 39/1: ‘Och then,’ says Pat, [...] ‘hang away, Mr. O’Mullihane!’. | |
| ‘The Lady of the Wreck’ in Poetical Vagaries 60: That’s a Potato, plain— / Long may your root every Irishman know! / Pats have long stuck to it. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Real Life in Ireland 62: He made proper allowances for the whiskeyfied temper of honest Pat. | |
| Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 23 June 3/2: Well done, Pat, you shall have two murphies instead of one. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Sydney Gaz. 15 Oct. 4/1: [T]he vulgar slang of pats and shillelaghs in song and fame which possess lrish wit. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Memoirs of a Water Drinker I 33: Take Pat from the influence of the bad [...] give him a fair chance in the race, he will out-strip the best and proudest of Europe. | |
| in Dublin Comic Songster 8: [song title] I Come From The Land Of Pats And Pittatees. | |
| Boston Blade 10 June n.p.: That drunken pat who was going to whip that woman. | |
| Life and Recollections of Yankee Hill 197: So saying, the old lady put another [quarter] down upon the one she had just received from Pat. The Irishman put both into his pocket. | |
| ‘Paddy’s Chapter on Pockets’ in Donnybrook-Fair Comic Songster 26: Tit for tat, English girls, the Pats all adore you. | |
| Sportsman (London) ‘Notes on News’ 24 June 4/1: Pat, who is ready at a moment’s notice shoot any number of landlords, objects altogether to the ‘potting’ of prelates. | |
| ‘I’m a Ship Without a Rudder’ 🎵 I’m a Judge without a wig, / I’m a Pat without a pig. | |
| Journal of Solomon Sidesplitter 17: ‘Can we have no sixpences, my jewel,’ said Pat. | |
| Dead Bird (Sydney) 16 Nov. 2/3: ‘Faith, now, that’s something dicentlike,’ said Pat, putting down the coin, satisfied and highly pleased. | |
| Sporting Times 1 Mar. 1/5: Ballyhooly’s Rules of Football have proved a great success in Ireland. [...] He met a countryman carrying a small basket. ‘Where are you coming from, Pat?’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 6 Oct. 25/2: Glasgow Evening News publishes figures tending to show that the alleged Anglo-Saxon soldier has either wonderful luck or a good deal more discretion than Sandy or Pat. | |
| Day Book (Chicago) 21 Nov. 16/2: Judge- Pat, I didn’t think you would hit a little man like that. Pat- Suppose he called you an irish slob? | |
| Dagger (London) Dec. I 3/3: For some time Pat had been out of work, and he couldn’t get a job anywhere. | |
| (con. 1916) Her Privates We (1986) 140: ’Ere we are, ’ere we are, ’ere we are again, / Pat and Mac, and Tommy and Jack, and Joe! | |
| Death Ship 236: A limey, a cockney, or a Pat. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | |
| letter 18 June in Leader (2000) 285: I suppose it’s just hard to credit that any sane person should voluntarily opt for the Pats. | |
| How to Talk Dirty 98: Pat and Abie and Rastus outside of Saint Peter’s gate all listening to those angels harping in stereotype. | |
| Spike Island (1981) 295: Angus knows I’m Irish – he knows the lads call me Pat – but he calls me Jock. | |
| Dict. of Invective (1991) 280: Other generics include: [...] Pat, another Irishman. |
2. (Aus.) a Chinese person.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Feb. 24/4: Then came a police raid, and the two combined convinced John, or, as he is becoming more generally known, Pat, that Chinatown was played out. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 16 May 4/1: My worldly wealth, in the great big city, was a trey-bit. With that I bought five large apples off a pat (Chinaman) . |
3. (Irish und.) as Pat’s, St Patrick’s Institution, an Irish equivalent of Borstal.
| The Joy (2015) [ebook] The Big Movie Night was one of the few things that made the teenage years we spent in Pat’s bearable. |
In compounds
1. Ireland.
| More Mornings at Bow Street 5: Mr. Connelly is a native of Patland. | |
 | North and South 286: Tens of thousands of these benighted and bigoted sons of Patland have been led to enlist in the crusade against the South. | |
| [? R.A. Fitzgerald] Jerks in from Short-Leg 56: We should adopt the favorite method in vogue in Patland, and answer them both with a series of questions. | |
| ‘Humbug, a “Sankey”-monious tune played in a “Moody” spirit’ [tract] 1: Then, over to Patland, and shortly in Belfast. | |
| Monroe City Democrat (MO) 5 Dec. 6/5: ‘Solomon Eckhardstein, tell us why [...] you are wearing a green ribbon?’ ‘Because, ma’am, Patland Mike and Denny said they’d bust me snoot if I didn’t’. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
| A Playwright’s Adventures 277: [...] not only dunned by publicans, dressmakers, and others [...] but he was supplicated by numbers of her low, needy, Patland relatives. | |
| Northern Whig 23 Feb. 3/6: Northern competitors performed with every credit to their clubs in the tenth Patland cup [motorcycle] trial, held in Dublin mountains. |
an Irish person; also attrib.
| Sporting Mag. Aug. 270/1: Third Battle was between Stockman and a new Patlander, of the name of Cavannah, for twenty sovereigns a side. During the first twelve rounds of the fight, the kid nobbed poor Pat with the utmost ease and indifference. Paddy, determined nopt to be denied, then got a turn. | |
| Good-Fellow’s Calendar 207: This talented Patlander being one evening loudly called on [...] for their favourite song of ‘the Sprig of Shilelagh’. | |
| Bk of Sports 45: ‘By de powers of Moll Kelly,’ said a Patlander,‘do dat again for me, Ned.’. | |
| Satirist (London) 20 Jan. 446/2: That Patlander ape, O’Jaw-man [...] we perceive, by the Express, Dublin paper, has been figuring away in a law court. | |
| Bell’s Life in London 15 Mar. 15/2: Being obliged to pay [...] caused a great regret in the bosom of the Patlander! | |
| Sam Slick in England II 270: Let’s see whether it’s John Bull or Patlander that’s to blame. | |
| Bell’s Life in Sydney 10 Oct. 3/2: Patrick Hely, a strong, square-shouldered Patlander. | |
| ‘A Snake-Bit Irishman’ Spirit of the Times (N.Y.) XV Jan. in Inge (1967) 58: The next evening the Patlander was seen traveling at a mighty rate through Knoxville. | |
| ‘Epistle from Joe Muggins’s Dog’ in Era (London) 16 Mar. 4/1: I heerd from ther Patlanders good akkounts of Brother to Chanticleer and Sister to Ballinkeele, a Derby oss and a Oaks mare, both ov whom thay say are klippers. | |
| Sam Slick’s Wise Saws I 279: Your panes of glass in your winders are all shingles, as the Patlanders say. | |
| Bell’s Life in Sydney 14 Oct. 3/2: Latterly they had as a tenant a Pat-lander, named Peter Kelly. | |
| Impressions of England 96: He then went on with Irish volubility, and the no less characteristic accent of the Patlander, to belabor Lord John’s bill. | |
| Bunyip Gawler, SA) 5 Sept. 4/3: [W]hen I was a juvenile Patlander, our vernacular for a blow was a ‘lick’. | |
| Joaquin 9: ‘Smother him, the bastely Mixican,’ said a Patlander. | |
| Prairie Farms and Prairie Folk 184: The little hot-headed, impulsive, but generous Patlander was a great favourite. | |
| Salt Lake Herald (UT) 19 Apr. 8/3: Queen Victoria has lost her favorite [...] John Brown, could she do better than command [...] in his place, a genuine Patlander? | |
| Adventures of Captain Kettle 191: He’s some sort of a big bug [...] inquiring into the organization of those Pat-lander rebels. | |
| Gem 16 Mar. 3: It doesn’t need a Scotland Yard detective to tell me you’re a Patlander. | |
| N.Y. Tribune 19 Nov. 12/7: Crosbie Garstin [...] known to ‘Punch’ readers as ‘Patlander’. | |
| Amer. Thes. Sl. |
(US) a vehicle in which prisoners are conveyed to a police station (cf. paddy wagon under Paddy n.).
| N.Y. World in Unforgettable Season (1981) 12 2: It would be my misfortune to get to the scene of trouble just as the ‘pat’ wagon pulled up. | |
| Jack-Roller 72: They called the police, and I was loaded into a ‘patty wagon’. |