Patdown

noun, slang

noun, slang ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An act of patting somebody's clothes to check for concealed weapons, etc. US, informal

    "To avoid such charges, airline screeners moved to random processes that led to patdowns of congressional representatives and mild-mannered elderly women..."

Synonyms

All synonyms
friskfrisking

Example

More examples

"Mary received a patdown search at the airport."

Etymology

Deverbal from pat down.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.