Forms: 6– batton, 7– baton. [a. mod.F. bâton:—OF. baston, whence the earlier Eng. BASTON. Baton appeared first in 16th c. in Sc. writers: the usual Eng. form during 17th and 18th c. was BATOON, but ba·ton was occasionally used in sense 2, and has now all but supplanted batoon.]
† 1. A staff or stick used as a weapon, sometimes also of iron or iron-tipped; a club, cudgel or truncheon; = BASTON 1. Obs. in general sense, in which also BATOON was the form always used during 17th and 18th c.
1548. Compl. Scot., 28. The father takkis ane batton or sum othir sterk vappin to puneise his sonne.
1596. Spenser, F. Q., VI. vii. 46. The Villaine … with his yron batton which he bore Let drive at him.
1609. Skene, Reg. Maj., 142. Gif any … mutilates ane other with ane batton.
1829. Scott, Anne of G., i. If you use your baton, he rewards you with the stab of a knife.
b. A staff or stick generally; a walking-stick (after French use).
1801. Strutt, Sports & Past., II. iii. 98. A small batton or stump set up.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. § 11. 79. Driving … the spikes of our batons into the slope above our feet.
2. A staff or truncheon carried as the symbol of office, command or authority; a staff of office; e.g., a Marshal’s baton, that carried by engine-drivers on a single line of railway, and the truncheon of a constable. Formerly also BATOON (2).
1590. J. Burel, Entry of Queen. With battons blank into thair hands.
1662. J. Bargrave, Pope Alex. VII. (1867), 116. Æsculapius … in a long robe, with his baton or knotty staff in his hand.
1690. Lond. Gaz., No. 2527/3. His High-Steward and Chamberlain, having gilt Batons in their Hands.
1813. Scott, Trierm., II. xxvii. The weighty baton of command.
1813. Wellington, in Gurw., Disp., X. 452. Marshal Jourdan’s Baton of a Marshal of France.
1864. Burton, Scot Abr., I. i. 39. Buchan got the baton of High Constable.
3. Her. An ordinary, in breadth the fourth part of a BEND, not extending to the extremities of an escutcheon, but broken off short at each end, so as to have the figure of a truncheon; used by French heralds as a difference or mark of consanguinity, but in English coats of arms only in the form of the baton sinister, the badge of bastardy. (Popularly called bar sinister.) Formerly BASTON (3), batune, BATTOON (3).
1816. Scott, Antiq., xxiii. Here is the baton-sinister, the mark of illegitimacy, extended diagonally through both coats upon the shield.
1864. Boutell, Heraldry Hist. & Pop., xxviii. 438. The eldest son of this Earl removed his father’s baton from his arms.
4. Music. The light stick or wand used by a musical conductor for beating time. (From mod. Fr., and often pronounced as French.)
1867. Athenæum, 6 April. The introduction of the bâton in England.
1880. Grove, Dict. Mus., I. 82/2. There, on March 6 and April 10, 1820, Spohr appeared … when a baton was used for perhaps the first time at an English concert.
1884. Yorksh. Post, 30 April. It was Costa, who founded in England the order of conductor, and who introduced the wand as baton in lieu of the fiddlestick.
5. See BATTEN.
6. Comb., as batonless, without a baton; cf. 2.
1885. Blackw. Mag., May, 73/1. The batonless chiefs, the disinherited princes of the Irish name.
