patent
Pluralpatents
Verbpatents, patenting, patented
Pluralpatents
Formspatents, patenting, patented
- 1An official declaration from a government agency granting an inventor the sole right to make, sell, or use a new invention for a fixed period.
Engineers rushed to file a patent before a competitor could claim the same idea.
The drug's patent expires next year, opening the market to generic versions.
Note
Most readers mean this sense today, and it has the busiest collocations: an inventor files a patent, a firm holds one, a rival tries not to infringe it, and in time it expires. The bargain behind it is disclosure. The inventor publishes how the thing works in exchange for a term of exclusivity. Holders who sue rather than build are mocked as patent trolls.
- 2SayPAY-tuhnt/ˈpeɪtənt/Clear and obvious, so that something can be readily seen or understood without any explanation.
His discomfort during the interview was patent, despite his attempts to hide it.
The flaws in the plan became patent once the team reviewed the budget.
Similarobvious, clear, evident, plain, explicit
Oppositehidden, unclear, obscure
Note
The "open" sense has turned toward argument: what is patent here is not merely visible but undeniable. Its fixed partner is nonsense, as in patent nonsense, and it also follows be, as in the error was patent. Compared with the "conspicuous" meaning, it tends to judge a claim or an idea rather than a feeling or a thing in plain view.
- 3To register a new invention with a government agency in order to secure the exclusive right to make, sell, and use it.
The startup rushed to patent its algorithm before rivals filed similar claims.
Edison patented hundreds of devices over the course of his career.
Note
The verb takes the invention as its object (patent a device, a process) and is common in the passive. Karen McVeigh's 2013 report in The Guardian covers a ruling that natural human genes cannot be patented. Declining to patent is a deliberate choice too. Manson, praised in 1946, refused to patent his apparatus so that other companies could adopt it freely.
- 4Legally protected by an exclusive government grant, so that only the holder may produce or sell the invention.
The manufacturer relies on a patent mechanism that competitors cannot legally reproduce.
Their patent coating is licensed to several other firms.
Similarpatented
Oppositeunpatented, generic
Note
A legal adjective that became a salesman's boast. Byron's Don Juan (1824) mocks a newspaper's eulogy of "Patent Blacking," and Dickens has Sam Weller wish for "patent double million magnifyin' gas microscopes." Patent medicines belong to the same world of advertising. When the claim is strictly legal, the synonym patented is the clearer choice.
- 5Ellipsis of patent leather.
The dancer's patent pumps gleamed across the stage.
She prefers patent for evening shoes because it catches the light.
Note
A clipping drops the noun it once modified, so patent leather becomes simply patent. Like the leather itself, it is a mass noun: shoes come in patent, not in a patent. It also stands before other nouns, as in patent pumps or patent heels. Context does the disambiguating here. Patent shoes are glossy, not protected by law.
- 6An official document by which a government or sovereign grants someone an appointment, privilege, right, title, or property.
The crown issued a patent appointing him to the new office.
Settlers received a patent granting them title to the riverside fields.
Similargrant, charter, warrant, commission
Note
The oldest noun here is shortened from Middle English lettre patent, a grant meant to be shown rather than sealed away. Samuel Pepys in 1660 has a man prove by his patent that a house and office belong to him, and a patent of nobility conferred rank. The full phrase letters patent survives for the document itself, and the 'open to public view' adjective keeps its original sense.
- 7An official grant of a monopoly over the manufacture, sale, and use of particular goods.
The crown granted a patent giving a single firm control of the glass trade.
Critics argued the patent let one supplier overcharge for everyday goods.
Note
An older and broader grant than the inventor's covered a monopoly over a line of goods, whether or not anyone had invented them. Such grants historically came from the sovereign. They stand between the formal document and the inventor's patent, which narrowed the idea to new inventions. Expect to meet this sense in histories of trade rather than in modern law.
- 8A license or formal permission granting someone the freedom to do something.
Winning the award seemed to give her a patent to speak her mind freely.
Fame gave the actor a patent to behave outrageously in public.
Similarlicense, permission, freedom
Note
Shakespeare's Othello uses it the way a modern writer might use license: give her patent to offend, with no article. The phrase reads as if someone were handing over a legal warrant to sin. The figure borrows the authority of the formal grant for private behavior, and the tone is ironic, because what is being authorized is wrongdoing.
- 9A manufactured item for which the maker has secured a patent.
Peddlers once hawked every sort of patent at the county fair.
The catalog listed dozens of patents for everyday household chores.
Similarinvention
- 10SayPAY-tuhnt/ˈpeɪtənt/Openly visible and unconcealed, standing out so as to be readily noticed.
The rivalry between the two departments was patent and openly discussed.
Signs of neglect were patent throughout the abandoned house.
Similarovert
Oppositehidden, concealed, covert
Note
The adjectives have their own line of descent: Latin patēns, "open, accessible, evident," through Middle English and Anglo-Norman. Open is the core meaning, and obvious grew from it. John Lothrop Motley's "instructions, both patent and secret" shows the clean opposition. The nearest synonym is overt, so patent hostility is hostility nobody troubles to hide.
- 11A quality or trait that someone possesses, spoken of as though they held an exclusive monopoly on it.
He behaves as though he owns a patent on common sense.
Nobody has a patent on suffering; everyone faces hardship.
Similarmonopoly
Note
A figure that turns a quality into property. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare has a speaker refuse to yield up a "virgin patent," treating virginity as a privilege held by right. Modern use is mostly hyperbolic, in the construction a patent on something. It is said of people who act as though no one else may share a virtue or a vice.
- 12To be so closely identified with something that one effectively monopolizes it.
Certain directors patent a visual signature so distinctive that a single frame reveals them.
He had so completely patented the deadpan delivery that copycats looked like frauds.
Similarmonopolize, own
- 13SayPAY-tuhnt/ˈpeɪtənt/Open and unobstructed; especially of the ductus arteriosus or foramen ovale, not having closed as normal development would require.
Ultrasound confirmed a patent ductus arteriosus in the premature infant.
If the foramen ovale remains patent into adulthood, it can allow abnormal blood flow.
Similaropen, unobstructed
Oppositeclosed, occluded, obstructed
Note
Medicine keeps the Latin meaning "open" alive in its plainest form. A patent ductus arteriosus or patent foramen ovale is a fetal passage that should have closed and did not. The adjective can come before the noun or after a verb, as in remains patent. More generally, a patent passage is simply unobstructed, which is sometimes exactly what a clinician hopes to find.
- 14SayPAY-tuhnt/ˈpeɪtənt/Describing an infection during the stage at which the causative organism becomes detectable through clinical testing.
The malaria became patent when parasites appeared in the patient's blood film.
Veterinarians wait until the worm infection is patent before running fecal egg counts.
Similardetectable
Oppositelatent
Note
Clinical medicine divides an infection into stages, and this word names the stage in which the organism, its eggs or its other products can actually be detected by tests. The quiet stretch before that is the prepatent period. The distinction matters in veterinary and human medicine alike. A negative test during the prepatent interval does not prove the absence of infection.
- 15SayPAY-tuhnt/ˈpeɪtənt/Of flour: fine in texture and consisting mainly of the inner endosperm of the grain from which it is milled.
Patent flour produces a paler, finer crumb than whole-grain alternatives.
The mill sells a high-grade patent flour drawn from the purest endosperm streams.
Note
Millers' grading lies behind this sense. Patent flour is drawn mostly from the inner endosperm and leaves out bran and germ, so it is pale, fine and low in ash. It names a grade, not a brand or a legal status, and it stands before the word flour. Bakers choose it when they want a light, delicate crumb.
- 16SayPAY-tuhnt/ˈpeɪtənt/Of a branch, leaf, or similar structure: outspread, and especially spreading at right angles to the axis.
The herb's patent leaves spread almost flat against the surrounding soil.
Botanists noted the patent branching that held each twig at a right angle to the trunk.
Similaroutspread
Note
A botanist's term for angle: a patent leaf or branch stands out from its stem, typically at or near a right angle. It belongs to a series of descriptive terms and is set against ascending, meaning angled upward, and appressed, meaning pressed close to the axis. Read it simply as "spreading."
- 17An official grant from the government conferring ownership of a specific piece of real property; a land grant.
The homesteader filed his claim and eventually secured a patent to the quarter-section.
Title to the ranch traced back to a federal patent issued in 1872.
Note
A term of American land law, now historical: the instrument by which the federal or a state government passed public-domain land into private hands. Because it is the first private title, a land patent is the root from which every later deed descends. That is why old title histories end at one. Securing such a grant has its own verb: a settler patented the land.
- 18To secure from the government a specific grant of ownership over a piece of real property.
Homesteaders who patent their claims gain full legal title to the land.
He patented the riverside parcel only after surveying its exact boundaries.
Note
The verbal partner of the land-grant noun, used in American land history for turning a claim into full title. Here a settler patents land, not an idea. The object is a parcel or claim, and the subject is the person receiving the grant, not the government making it. Outside historical and legal writing it is easily misread as the invention sense.
- 19To which a person has, or appears to have, an exclusive claim; also, especially inventive or well suited to someone.
Improvised excuses were his patent specialty, deployed with practiced ease.
She had a patent knack for defusing arguments before they boiled over.
Similarcharacteristic, distinctive, special
Note
The advertiser's boast turned into a joke. In Dickens, a brandy bottle brought out of a cupboard is "the patent digester." The figure borrows the swagger of the "legally protected" adjective to claim a proprietary quality for someone's own trick or remedy, as in his patent excuse. The tone is usually affectionate mockery.
- 20Especially of a document granting a privilege or right: open to public inspection or use rather than sealed and private.
The sovereign's grant was patent, addressed to all subjects and open for any to examine.
Such commissions were issued patent so their terms lay open to public view.
Note
Latin patēns, "open", applied to paperwork. A grant issued patent was unsealed and addressed to all, so anyone could read its terms, unlike an instrument closed under private seal. Today the adjective survives almost only in the fixed phrase letters patent, where it follows its noun in the French manner. That phrase was later clipped to give the document noun its name.
- 21Of an office, title, or right: appointed or conferred by letters patent.
The earldom was a patent dignity, conferred by the sovereign's formal grant.
He claimed a patent office that only the crown could bestow.
Note
An office held patent was one held under formal grant from the crown. Samuel Pepys, writing in May 1660, records a man who hoped the King would restore "every man to his places that ever had been patent," a clerkship of the signet among them. The sense is archaic now. In Pepys it follows a verb (had been patent) rather than standing before a noun.
- 22A wager combining seven bets across three selections, yielding a return even when only one of the selections wins.
She backed three horses with a patent, covering every winning combination at once.
A patent costs more than a single bet because it bundles seven separate stakes.
Note
A betting term for full cover on three selections: three singles, three doubles and one treble, seven stakes in all. Because every single is included, one winner still returns something. The doubles and the treble pay only if two or three selections come in. Each of the seven is a separate stake, so the bet costs seven times the unit stake.
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Practice
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Origins
The noun comes from Middle English patent, meaning a document that grants an office, property, right, or permission. It is either a shortening of 'lettre patent' or taken directly from Anglo-Norman and Middle French patente, itself a clipping of 'lettres patentes' (compare Late Latin littera patēns). The verb is derived from the noun.
From Middle English patent ('wide open; clear, unobstructed'), from Anglo-Norman and Middle French patent, and directly from Latin patēns ('open; accessible; evident'), the present active participle of pateō ('to be open'), from Proto-Indo-European *peth₂- ('to spread out; to fly').