# batty

Pronunciation: say "BAT-ee" /ˈbæti/

## Adjective

1. Mad, crazy, or foolish. *(slang)*
   - Simple: Crazy, silly, or a bit out of your mind.
   - _Her batty uncle keeps a pet crow and talks to it all day._
   - _The idea sounded batty at first, but it actually worked._

## Noun

2. The buttocks or anus. *(dialectal, Multicultural London English)*
   - Simple: The bottom, the part of the body you sit on.
   - _He fell off the low wall and bruised his batty._
   - _She wiggled her batty to the beat of the music._
3. A homosexual man (used as a derogatory term). *(Canada, Jamaica, UK)*
   - Simple: An insulting word for a gay man.
   - _Neighbors whispered cruelly that the new tenant was a batty._
   - _The thugs cornered him, jeering that he was nothing but a batty._

## Adjective

4. Belonging to, or resembling, a bat, the winged mammal. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: Like a bat, or belonging to a bat, the flying animal.

## Noun

5. Obsolete form of paddy. *(obsolete)* — Obsolete form of paddy (“rice”).
   - Simple: Obsolete form of paddy. An old word once used for rice.

## Origin

**Meanings 1, 4** — Formed from bat plus the suffix -y. In the sense "insane" (attested 1903), it comes from the expression have bats in one's belfry, referring to the way bats fly around erratically.
**Meanings 2–3** — From bottom, possibly influenced by botty or butt.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/batty (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).