Word.ws English Dictionary

paten

/ˈpætən/

paten noun: the plate used to hold the host during the Eucharist.

Noun

paten (plural patens)

  1. The plate used to hold the host during the Eucharist.
    • He longed […] to stand aloof from the altar, forgotten by the people, his shoulders covered with a humeral veil, holding the paten within its folds […].1916, James Joyce, chapter IV, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC
    • An enameled miniature of Christ is set in the center of a jeweled alabaster paten, the plate that holds the bread during Communion services.1980, Colin Thubron, Seafarers: The Venetians, page 41
  2. Any shallow dish found in an archaeological site.

paten meaning in Tagalog and Indonesian

paten in Tagalog

plate for the host during Eucharist
patena

paten in Indonesian

plate for the host during Eucharist
patena

Forms of paten

pluralpatens

Origin of paten

From Middle English patene, from Old French patene, from Latin patina, from Ancient Greek πατάνη (patánē). Doublet of patina, patine, and patena.

Questions about paten

What does paten mean?
Paten means the plate used to hold the host during the Eucharist.
What is paten in Tagalog?
Paten in Tagalog is patena. See Paten meaning in Tagalog.
What part of speech is paten?
Paten is a noun.
How do you pronounce paten?
Paten is pronounced /ˈpætən/.
What is the plural of paten?
The plural of paten is patens.

Words near paten in the dictionary

  1. patellulæ
  2. patels
  3. patelship
  4. patelships
  5. Pateman
  6. paten
  7. patena
  8. patenas
  9. Patenaude
  10. Patenaudes
  11. patencies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paten (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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Cite this entry: “paten.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/paten. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.