Word.ws English Dictionary

pandy bat

pandy bat noun: (originally) a stout leather strap reinforced internally with whalebone or even lead, and used at Jesuit schools to inflict corporal punishment on pupils by striking the palm; (latterly, sometimes) more loosely applied to any punishment bat.

Noun

pandy bat (plural pandy bats)

  1. (Ireland, historical) (originally) a stout leather strap reinforced internally with whalebone or even lead, and used at Jesuit schools to inflict corporal punishment on pupils by striking the palm; (latterly, sometimes) more loosely applied to any punishment bat
    • The soutane sleeve swished again as the pandybat was lifted and a loud crashing sound and a fierce maddening tingling burning pain made his hand shrink together […]1916, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC
    • All this punctuated, driven home, by loud-resounding strokes of the pandy-bat, not administered one after another quickly, but at regular intervals.1930 Irish Province News, 5th Year No 3 (Irish Province of the Society of Jesus) "Obituary: Fr James Daly"

Examples of pandy bat in a sentence

  • The procedure was that you knocked on the door and were called in, presented the docket, watched the pandy bat (some were slim, some fat) being removed from a drawer or inside the soutane.1995, Aidan Higgins, Donkey's Years: Memories of a Life as Story Told, London: Secker & Warburg, →ISBN, pages 140-141:
  • Corporal punishment was administered by use of a thick leather strap called a ‘pandy bat’.2010 Martin Tierney, Reflections of a Dublin priest (Dublin : Columba Press) →ISBN p. 19
  • Corporal punishment was used by both for disciplinary purposes; the pandy bat by the Jesuits, and the leather strap by the Brothers.2024 June 3, Gerry McArdle, “Celebrating James Joyce and those fearful Jesuits”, in The Irish Times:

Forms of pandy bat

pluralpandy bats
alternative formpandy-bat
alternative formpandybat

Origin of pandy bat

pandy + bat Perhaps also a pun on the Latin pendebat "you paid".

Questions about pandy bat

What does pandy bat mean?
Pandy bat means (originally) a stout leather strap reinforced internally with whalebone or even lead, and used at Jesuit schools to inflict corporal punishment on pupils by striking the palm; (latterly, sometimes) more loosely applied to any punishment bat.
How do you use pandy bat in a sentence?
The procedure was that you knocked on the door and were called in, presented the docket, watched the pandy bat (some were slim, some fat) being removed from a drawer or inside the soutane.
What part of speech is pandy bat?
Pandy bat is a noun.
What is the plural of pandy bat?
The plural of pandy bat is pandy bats.

Words near pandy bat in the dictionary

  1. pandurina
  2. pandurinas
  3. Panduro
  4. Panduros
  5. pandy
  6. pandy bat
  7. pandy-bat
  8. Pandy-rhiw-Saeson
  9. Pandya
  10. Pandyas
  11. pandybat

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pandy bat (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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