Prat

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /pɹat/Rhymes: -æt

Alternative forms

• pratt

From Middle English prat, from Old English præt, prætt ("trick, prank, craft, art, wile"), from Proto-Germanic *prattuz ("boastful talk, deceit"), from Proto-Indo-European *brodno- ("to wander about"). Cognate with Eastern Frisian prat, Dutch pret ("fun, pleasure, gaity"), obsolete Dutch prat ("cunning, strategem, scheme, a prideful display, arrogance"), Low German prot, Norwegian prette ("trick"), Icelandic prettur ("a trick"). Related to pretty.

Full definition of prat

Noun

1. (now Scotland) A cunning or mischievous trick; a prank, a joke. from 10th c.

Related terms

• pretty

Adjective

1. (obsolete) Cunning, astute. 13th-17th c.

Origin unknown.

Noun

1. (slang) A buttock, or the buttocks; a person's bottom. from 16th c.
• Thomas Dekker, 1608 , The Canters Dictionarie in The Belman of London (second part Lanthorne and Candlelight)Pratt, a Buttock.
• 1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin 2006, p. 5:Mungo didn't like their attitude. Nor did he like exposing his prat in mixed company.
2. (UK, slang) A fool. from 20th c.
3. (slang) The female genitals.
• 1967 (sourced to 1942), William A. Schwartz, The Limerick: 1700 Examples with Notes, Variants and Examples Vol 1, Greenleaf Classics 1967, p. 124:"She's a far better piece
  Than the Viceroy's niece,
  Who has also more fur on her prat."
• 1984 John Murray, ed, Panurge, Vol 1–3, p. 39:"...they would kidnap a girl and take her back to their camp where they would pull down her knickers, hoping to find hairs on her prat."
• 2005 Sherrie Seibert Goff, The Arms of Quirinus, iUniverse 2005, p. 135:"My prat was sore from the unfamiliar activities of the night before, but my virgin bleeding had ceased, and we rode most of the day in that unworldly haze that comes with lack of sleep."

Synonyms

Derived terms

• pratfall
• prat about
• prattery rare
• prattish rare

Anagrams

• part
• rapt
• tarp
• trap