batty
UK/ˈbæti/US/ˈbæti/
batty adjective: mad, crazy, silly. Also the obsolete form of paddy.
Adjective
batty (comparative battier, superlative battiest)
- Mad, crazy, silly.
- He had left too fast. He must have seen the girl. He couldn't be sure she was too batty to see him.1939, Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep, →ISBN, page 42
- On Sunday’s David Frost Show, Baroness Thatcher looked quite batty to me, eyes rolling.1992 July 6, Edwina Currie, Diary
- Belonging to, or resembling, a bat (mammal).
- And from each other look thou lead them thus
Till o'er their brows death-counterfeiting sleep
With leaden legs and batty wings doth creep.c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First...
- And from each other look thou lead them thus
Noun
batty (plural batties)
- The buttocks or anus.
- He kick the boy down and beat the boy back and batty and leg.2014, Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings, Oneworld Publications (2015), page 35
- A homosexual man.
- For example, recent Jamaican 'raga' lyrics by Buju Banton and Brand Nubian attach the affirmation of black identity to crude animosity towards homosexuality and contain offensive language against the 'batties' as icons of non-blackness.1996, Rudi Bleys, The geography of perversion
Proper noun capitalized: Batty
Batty (plural Battys)
- A surname transferred from the given name.
Also used as
batty is also the obsolete form of paddy.
Forms of batty
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | battier |
| superlative | battiest |
| Noun | |
| plural | batties |
| alternative form | bati |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Battys |
Origin of batty
From bat + -y. In sense “insane”, attested 1903, from expression have bats in one's belfry, from tendency of bats to fly around erratically. Compare also batshit (“insane”) and squirrelly (“jumpy, eccentric”).
From bottom, possibly influenced by botty or butt.
From Batte, a Middle English pet-form of Bartholomew.
Words formed from batty
Phrases with batty
Words that rhyme with batty
Questions about batty
- What does batty mean?
- Batty means mad, crazy, silly.
- What part of speech is batty?
- Batty can be an adjective, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce batty?
- Batty is pronounced /ˈbæti/ (UK).
Words near batty in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: batty (page history and authors); Batty (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-batty.ogg.
Cite this entry: “batty.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/batty. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.