Patter is a prepared and practiced

speech Speech is a human vocal communication using language. Each language uses phonetic combinations of vowel and consonant sounds that form the sound of its words (that is, all English words sound different from all French words, even if they are th ...

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 e ...

, salesperson, dance caller, magician, or

comedian A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolish (as in slapstick), or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience dir ...

. The term may have been a colloquial shortening of " Pater Noster", 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 quickly and mechanically. From this, it became a slang word for the secret and equally incomprehensible mutterings of a cant language used by beggars, thieves, fences, etc., and then the fluent plausible talk that a

cheap-jack A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a chapman, packman, cheapjack, hawker, higler, huckster, (coster)monger, colporteur or solicitor, is a door-to-door and/or travelling vendor of goods. In England, the term was mostly used ...

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 magicians, 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 shows (in the historical meaning) and Russian ''

rayok A rayok ( rus, раёк, p=rɐˈjɵk, "small paradise") was a Russian fairground peep show. Performed using a box with pictures viewed through magnifying lenses, these were accompanied by lewd rhymed jokes. ''The Fall of Adam and Eve'' was one of ...

'', patter is an important component of a show. The

radio DJ A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile D ...

patter is among the roots of

rapping Rapping (also rhyming, spitting, emceeing or MCing) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular". It is performed or chanted, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment. The ...

. 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