[First found in end of 16th c., but may have been in dialectal use before; app. a. ON. batna to improve, get better, recover, f. bati advantage, improvement, amelioration; cogn. w. Goth. gabatnan ‘to be advantaged, to be bettered, to profit,’ a neuter-passive form derived from *batan, bôt, batans to be useful, to profit, to boot.’ Cf. also Du. baten to avail, yield profit, baat profit, gain, advantage, benefit, and see Grimm s.v. batten. A cogn. bat in sense of ‘profit, advantage, improvement,’ although not known as a separate word in Eng., is implied in the derivatives batt-able, bat-ful, batt-le adj. With all the senses cf. BATTLE v.3]
1. intr. To grow better or improve in condition; esp. (of animals) to improve in bodily condition by feeding, to feed to advantage, thrive, grow fat.
1591. Lyly, Endym., III. iii. 39. No, let him batten, when his tongue Once goes, a cat is not worse strung.
1614. B. Jonson, Barth. Fair, II. iii. (1631), 21. It makes her fat you see. Shee battens with it.
1648. Herrick, Hesper. (1869), 214. We eate our own, and batten more, Because we feed on no man’s score.
1684. Dryden, in Southerne’s Disappoint., Prol. 53. Our women batten well on their good Nature. Ibid. (1687), Hind & P., I. 390. Th’ etherial pastures with so fair a flock … bat’ning on their food.
b. To feed gluttonously on, glut oneself; to gloat or revel in. (With indirect passive, to be battened on, in mod. writers.)
1602. Shaks., Ham., III. iv. 67. Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, And batten on this Moor?
1693. W. Robertson, Phraseol. Gen., 215. To batten in ’s own dung, fimo volutari.
1789. Wolcott (P. Pindar), Subj. Painters, Wks. 1812, II. 210. Dainty mud … In which they had been battening.
1830. Tennyson, Poems, 130. Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep.
1833. Mrs. Browning, Prometh. Bd., Poems (1850), I. 187. The strong carnivorous eagle shall … batten deep Upon thy dusky liver.
1879. Dixon, Brit. Cyprus, viii. 78. A skeleton battened on by kites and crows.
c. fig. To thrive, grow fat, prosper (esp. in a bad sense, at the expense or to the detriment of another); to gratify a morbid mental craving.
1605. B. Jonson, Volpone, in Campbell’s Spec., III. 185. And with these thoughts so battens, as if fate Would be as easily cheated on, as he.
1641. J. Jackson, True Evang. T., I. 56. That religion should batten with blood.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev. (1872), II. III. ii. 91. Battening vampyre-like on a People next door to starvation.
1870. Emerson, Soc. & Solit., x. ¶ 25. There are melancholy skeptics with a taste for carrion who batten on the hideous facts in history,—persecutions, inquisitions, [etc.].
2. To grow fertile (as soil); to grow rank (as a plant).
1855. Singleton, Virgil, I. 104. That twice should batten with our blood Emathia and Hæmus’ spacious plains.
1859. Holland, Gold F., xxiv. 283. A potato—a bloated tuber that battens in the muck of other times.
† 3. trans. To improve, feed to advantage, fatten up. Obs. (The pa. pple. battened, belonged orig. to the intr. sense; cf. well-grown, well-read, etc.)
[1611. Cotgr., s.v. Advenu, Vne fille bien advenuĕ, well growne … well batned, or batled.]
1637. Milton, Lycidas, 29. We drove a-field … Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of night.
1643. Burroughes, Exp. Hosea, ii. (1852), 172. They did batten themselves and suck out the Egyptian manners and customs.
1790. Cowper, Iliad, XXII. 107. As some fell serpent … batten’d with herbs Of baneful juice to fury.
† 4. To fertilize (soil). Obs. rare.
1611. Speed, Theat. Gt. Brit., xxxv. 69/1. Others [rivers] doe so batten the ground that the meadowes even in the midst of winter grow greene.
