patteran
patteran noun: any of several coded signs left along a road or on a non-Roma house by one Rom to another. The most common ones consist of crossed sprigs (usually of different trees or shrubs) indicating, for example, a direction travelled.
Noun
patteran (plural patterans)
- Any of several coded signs left along a road or on a non-Roma house by one Rom to another. The most common ones consist of crossed sprigs (usually of different trees or shrubs) indicating, for example, a direction travelled.
- Follow the Romany Patteran / Sheer to the Austral Light, / Where the besom of God is the wild South wind, / Sweeping the sea-floors white.1890, Rudyard Kipling, The Gipsy Trail, Boston: Alfred Bartlett, published 1909, verse 8
- They began to come upon from time to time small cairns of rock by the roadside. They were signs in gypsy language, lost patterans.2006, Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Forms of patteran
| plural | patterans |
|---|---|
| alternative form | patrin |
Origin of patteran
From Romani patrin (“leaf”), perhaps specifically from an inflected form like Vlax Romani pateryánsa.
Questions about patteran
- What does patteran mean?
- Patteran means any of several coded signs left along a road or on a non-Roma house by one Rom to another. The most common ones consist of crossed sprigs (usually of different trees or shrubs) indicating, for example, a direction travelled.
- What part of speech is patteran?
- Patteran is a noun.
- What is the plural of patteran?
- The plural of patteran is patterans.
Words near patteran in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: patteran (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: “patteran.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/patteran. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.