Word.ws English Dictionary

patina

/ˈpætɪnə/US/pəˈtinə/

patina noun: a paten (a flat type of dish).

Noun

patina (countable and uncountable, plural patinas or patinae)

  1. (originally) A paten (a flat type of dish).
  2. The colour or incrustation which age and wear give to (chiefly metallic) objects; especially, the green rust which covers works of art such as ancient bronzes, coins and medals.
  3. A green colour tinted with grey, like that of bronze patina.
  4. (figuratively) A gloss or superficial layer.
    • He enjoys a patina of respect by the police, despite being an ex-criminal.
    • It demonstrates how scientific authority could be constructed on the fly, as it were, by someone with no connections and no psychological credentials who offered a technique that had the patina of modern science[…]2012, Alison Winter, Memory: Fragments of a Modern History

Adjective

patina (not comparable)

  1. Of a green colour, tinted with grey, like that of bronze patina.

patina meaning in Hindi, Bengali and Persian

patina in Hindi

patina, a green rust that forms on copper, bronze, etc
काई kāī

patina in Bengali

প্রাচীন আভা

patina in Persian

colour or incrustation which age and wear give to objects
پتینه patine

Forms of patina

pluralpatinas
pluralpatinae

Plural of patina: patinas or patinae

Origin of patina

Borrowed from Italian patina, from Latin patina (“dish, pan”), itself a borrowing from Ancient Greek πατάνη (patánē), either from Proto-Indo-European *peth₂- (“to spread”) or from Pre-Greek. Doublet of paten, patena, patine, and (possibly) pan.

Words formed from patina

Questions about patina

What does patina mean?
Patina means a paten (a flat type of dish).
What is patina in Hindi?
Patina in Hindi is काई (kāī). See Patina meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is patina?
Patina can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce patina?
Patina is pronounced /ˈpætɪnə/ (UK).
What is the plural of patina?
The plural of patina is patinas.

Words near patina in the dictionary

  1. patimar
  2. patimars
  3. patimokkha
  4. patimokkhas
  5. patin
  6. patina
  7. patinae
  8. patinaed
  9. patinas
  10. patinate
  11. patinated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: patina (page history and authors); काई (Hindi) (page history and authors); patina (Bengali Wiktionary) (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-patina.wav.

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