Word.ws English Dictionary

rattans

rattans is the plural of rattan.

rattans is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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: Rattans

Rattans

  1. (plural) plural of Rattan

Questions about rattans

What is rattans the plural of?
Rattans is the plural of rattan.
What part of speech is rattans?
Rattans is a proper noun.

Words near rattans in the dictionary

  1. rattan palms
  2. rattan pepper
  3. rattaned
  4. rattaning
  5. rattanings
  6. rattans
  7. rattanware
  8. rattanwares
  9. rattany
  10. Rattay
  11. ratte

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: rattans (page history and authors); Rattans (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-rattans.wav.

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