Patter is a prepared and practiced speech that is designed to produce a desired response from its audience. Examples of occupations with a patter might include the

auctioneer An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition exi ...

salesperson Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in r ...

, dance caller, magician, or comedian. The term may have been a colloquial shortening of "

Pater Noster The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

", or the

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

, and may have referred to the practice of mouthing or mumbling

prayers Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication. In the narrow sense, the term refers to an act of supplication or intercession directed towards a deity or a deified ...

quickly and mechanically. From this, it became a slang word for the secret and equally incomprehensible mutterings of a

cant language A cant is the jargon or language of a group, often employed to exclude or mislead people outside the group.McArthur, T. (ed.) ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (1992) Oxford University Press It may also be called a cryptolect, argot ...

used by beggars, thieves, fences, etc., and then the fluent plausible talk that a cheap-jack employs to pass off his goods. Many

illusionist Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of illusion, stage magic, and close up magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It ...

s, e.g.,

card magic Card manipulation is the branch of magic that deals with creating effects using sleight of hand techniques involving playing cards. Card manipulation is often used in magical performances, especially in close-up, parlor, and street magic. So ...

ians, use patter both to enhance the show and to distract the attention of the spectators. It is thus also used of any rapid manner of talking, and of a patter-song, in which a very large number of words have to be sung at high speed to fit the music. A western square dance caller may interpolate patter—in the form of metrical lines, often of nonsense—to fill in between commands to the dancers. In some circumstances, the talk becomes a different sense of "patter": to make a series of rapid strokes or pats, as of raindrops. Here, it is a form of

onomatopoeia Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

. In certain forms of entertainment,

peep show A peep show or peepshow is a presentation of a live sex show or pornographic film which is viewed through a viewing slot. Several historical media provided voyeuristic entertainment through hidden erotic imagery. Before the development of the c ...

s (in the historical meaning) and Russian '' rayok'', patter is an important component of a show. The radio DJ patter is among the roots of rapping. In hypnotherapy, the hypnotist uses a 'patter' or script to deliver positive suggestions for change to the client. In ''

London Labour and the London Poor ''London Labour and the London Poor'' is a work of Victorian journalism by Henry Mayhew. In the 1840s, he observed, documented and described the state of working people in London for a series of articles in a newspaper, the ''Morning Chronicle'' ...

'',

Henry Mayhew Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine ''Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in ...

divides the street-sellers of his time into two groups: the ''patterers'', and everyone else."The Gentleman Grafter"
by Howard Kaplan, May 2006. '' Vanity Fair''

Notes

References

* {{EB1911, wstitle=Patter Entertainment Oral communication

See also

Notes

References