Word.ws English Dictionary

batten down

batten down verb: to close or make watertight, referring to hatches and cargo.

Verb

batten down (third-person singular simple present battens down, present participle battening down, simple past and past participle battened down)

  1. To close or make watertight, referring to hatches and cargo.
  2. (transitive) To secure.
  3. (intransitive) To prepare for adversity.

Forms of batten down

third-person singular presentbattens down
present participlebattening down
past participlebattened down
pastbattened down

Words formed from batten down

Questions about batten down

What does batten down mean?
Batten down means to close or make watertight, referring to hatches and cargo.
What part of speech is batten down?
Batten down is a verb.
What is the past tense of batten down?
The past tense of batten down is battened down.

Words near batten down in the dictionary

  1. battels
  2. battement
  3. battements
  4. batten
  5. Batten disease
  6. batten down
  7. batten down the hatches
  8. battenberg
  9. Battenberg cake
  10. Battenberg cakes
  11. Battenberg lace

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: batten down (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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