son grelot; faire la jactance; jarguer (= to patter flash; also jaspiner le jars); jarviller; javoter; radouber la lanterne; lantenni (Breton cant.); limer (= 'to stutter'); mouliner (= to prattle: specifically of women); pallasser; papoter; parlotter; rouscailler.
c.1360. Alliterative Poems [Morris, p. 15, l. 485]. Thou coutheg neuer god nauther plese ne pray Ne neuer nawther pater ne crede.
c.1394. Piers Plowman's Creed, 5. A, and all myn a b c, After have I lerned, And patred in my pater-noster Iche poynt after other.
1500. How the Ploughman learned his Paternoster [Halliwell]. Ever he patred on theyr names faste; Than he had them in ordre at the laste.
d.1536. Tyndale, Works, 232. How blind are they which thinke prayer to be the pattering of many words.
1546. Heywood, Wit and Folly [Percy Soc.], p. xxxvii. Lorde! how my husbande nowe doth patter, And of the pye styl doth clatter.
1561. Godly Queene Hester [Grosart], 22. By his crafti pattering, hath turned law into flattering.
1589. Nashe, Month's Mind [Works, i. 173]. See how like the old Ape this young Monkey pattereth.
c.1648. Knaves No Honest Men, &c. [Collier, Roxburghe Ballads (1847), xxi]. Marry, they say that the running stationers of London, I mean such as used to sing ballads, and those that cry malignant pamphlets in the streets.
c.1696. B. E., Dict. Cant. Crew, s.v., Patering.
1781. Parker, View of Society, I. 200. I could patter him on the Cant Universities of Newgate, Bedlam, and Bridewell.
1785. Grose, Vulg. Tongue, s.v., Pattering. The maundering or pert replies of servants: also talk or palaver . . . to amuse one intended to be cheated. Pattering of prayers; the confused sound of . . . praying together. Ibid. Patter. How the blowen lushes jackey, and patters flash.
1789. Parker, Life's Painter, 150. Gammon and patter is the language of cant.
1819. Scott, Bride of Lammermoor, i. Your characters . . . patter too much.
1821. Haggart, Life, 88. It was shown upon my patter that I had the dub in my fam.
c. 1838. Reynolds, The Housebreaker's Song [Farmer, Musa Pedestris (1896), 125]. Though the hum-box patterer talked of hell.
1841. Leman Rede, Sixteen String Jack, i. 6. Stash your patter and come along!
1851. Mayhew, London Lab., 228-51. The pattering genus known as running patterers, or flying stationers, from the fact of their being continually on the move . . . Contradistinguished from them, however, are the standing patterers, [who] require, a 'pitch' . . . where they can hold forth . . . The long-song sellers did not depend upon patter—though some of them pattered a little. . . . The parsons came out as stunning patrons of the patter. . . . He patters very little in the main drag. Ibid. i. 253. One quick-witted Irishman, whom I knew to be a Roman Catholic, was working a patter against the Pope.
1852. Judson, Myst., &c., of New York, iv. Nothin much worth pattering about. Ibid. iv. Patter flash, my lucky, you're as used to it as I am.
1853. Dickens, Bleak House, xxxix. Patter allusions to the subject, [are] received with loud applause.
1856. Mayhew, World of London, 6, note. Patter, . . . is borrowed merely from the pater-nosters that the old-established mendicants delighted to mumble.
1863. Story of a Lancashire Thief, 9. Joe was . . . a patterer; and could screeve a fakement with any one.
1864. Hotten, Slang Dict., s.v. Patter. . . . Probably from the Latin, paternoster . . . said, before the Reformation, in a 'low voice' by the priest, until he came to 'and lead us not into temptation,' to which the choir responded, 'but deliver us from evil.' In the reformed Prayer Book this was altered, and the Lord's Prayer directed to be said 'with an loud voice.' Dr. Pusey takes this view of the derivation in his Letter to the Bishop of London, 78, 1851.
