Word.ws English Dictionary

ratan

ratan is the alternative form of rattan.

Meaning of rattan

Noun

rattan (countable and uncountable, plural rattans)

  1. Any of several species of climbing palm of the genus Calamus.
  2. (uncountable) The plant used as a material for making furniture, baskets etc.
    • Then, how comparatively sweet was everything on board - no paint, no tar, no new rope, (vilest of smells to the qualmish!) no grease, or oil, or varnish; but instead of these, bamboo and rattan, and coir rope and palm thatch; pure vegetable fibres, which smell pleasantly if they smell at all, and...1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume II, London: Macmillan and Co., page 162
  3. (broadly) A cane made from this material.
    • He who first acts as striker asks the other how many blows of the rattan he will bear on his forearm without crying out.1906, Walter William Skeat, Charles Otto Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula

See all 5 meanings of rattan

Proper noun capitalized: Ratan

Ratan

  1. A male given name from Sanskrit used in India.

Forms of ratan

pluralratans

Origin of ratan

Borrowed from Hindi रतन (ratan, “gem, gemstone”).

Questions about ratan

What does ratan mean?
Ratan means a male given name from Sanskrit used in India.
What is ratan the alternative form of?
Ratan is the alternative form of rattan.
What part of speech is ratan?
Ratan is a proper noun.

Words near ratan in the dictionary

  1. Ratak
  2. ratal
  3. ratals
  4. ratamacue
  5. ratamacues
  6. ratan
  7. Ratanakiri
  8. Ratanakkiri
  9. Ratanavanich
  10. ratanhia red
  11. ratanies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ratan (page history and authors); Ratan (page history and authors); rattan (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: “ratan.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ratan. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.