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patty

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Pronunciation

Etymology

It is borrowed from French pâté (“pie, pasty”), altered in English.[2][3][4][5][6] The OED sees the English suffix -y substituted for the French ending,[2][7] and the Shorter Oxford and the Oxford Dictionary of English see the influence of pasty.[4][5] The French word is pâte (“paste”) with the suffix -é,[2] and that noun comes from Old French paste (“dough, pastry”), from Late Latin pasta (“dough, pastry cake”).[8][9] Weekley calls the English words pasty, patty and pâté three successive borrowings of the same French word.[10] Barnhart and Etymonline find it first in patti-pan, something baked in a small pan, from the 1690s.[11][8]

Earliest recorded meaning

A small pie or pasty: 1660, in R. May's Accomplisht Cook.[2][12] Barnhart dates the word to 1694, in patti-pan,[11] and Etymonline to 1710.[8]

Semantic evolution

The OED explains the modern sense, a small flat cake of chopped or minced food, especially meat, recorded from 1904 and chiefly North American, as a transfer from the pasty to its typical filling, probably helped by association with pat, a small flattened lump.[2] From 1916 a patty was also a thin round sweet, often flavoured with peppermint.[2][4] The original sense, a small pie, is now used chiefly in the Caribbean.[2] The pattypan, a small tin in which patties are baked, is recorded by 1710.[8][4]

Timeline

  • 1660 – a small pie or pasty.[2][12]
  • 1694 – patti-pan, something baked in a small pan.[11]
  • 1904 – a small flat cake of chopped food, especially meat.[2]
  • 1916 – a thin round sweet, often peppermint-flavoured.[2]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A small flat cake of chopped or minced food, especially ground beef: He grilled four lamb patties.[13][12][2]
  2. A small pie or pasty; in the Caribbean, a pastry with a savoury filling.[13][12][2]
  3. A small, flat, round sweet, often flavoured with peppermint.[12][2][4]

Word family

  • pattypan
  • patty shell

References

  1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  4. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  5. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
  6. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  7. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  8. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  10. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  11. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  12. ^ a b c d e Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  13. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins