noun

• (now historical) One of various wooden attachments used to lift a shoe above wet or muddy ground.
  "They presented the most extraordinary and comic aspect imaginable, with their shaven heads and long beard; (the heads of all Mussulmen are shaved quite bare, with the exception of a tuft on the very top, which is left for the angel of the tomb on the day of judgment, say they, to grasp and carry them up to heaven by;) besides these, other objects are seen wrapped up in towels, with black grisled beards tickling their breasts, and tottering along on a high pair of pattens or rather stilts, at the imminent danger, as it appears, of breaking their necks."
• (obsolete) A circular wooden plank attached to a horse's foot to prevent it from sinking into a bog while plowing.
  "At and in the neighbourhood of North Meoks, near Ormskirk in Lancashire, there is a whole country of peat, and how deep this soil is God only knows, for the horses which plough thereon wear pattens to keep them from sinking to the bellies: here I was not long ago deluded, by my ignorance of the country and a team in pattens, to attempt riding over ploughed ground to inquire my way."
• (now British dialectal) An ice skate.
• (historical) An iron hoop attached to a person's boot in cases of hip-joint disease.

verb

• (intransitive) To go about wearing pattens.