Tat
name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 Cheap and vulgar tastelessness; sleaze. British, uncountable
- 2 Clipping of tatting. abbreviation, alt-of, clipping
"She's so swishy in her satin and tat / In her frock coat and bipperty-bopperty hat"
- 3 A pony. India, archaic
"And so each morning before daybreak I am up, and having dispatched my luggage on the backs of coolies after much noise and bustle, without which no natives can work, I mount my tat as the sun begins to touch the higher hills, and start on my morning ride of twelve miles."
- 4 A tattoo. slang
"Now give me my cable, fast food, four-by's, tats, right away I want it now."
- 5 Alternative form of tatt (“a die, especially one that is loaded”). UK, alt-of, alternative, archaic, slang
Show 10 more definitions
- 6 Alternative form of tatty (“kind of woven mat or screen”). alt-of, alternative
- 7 Some small thing, especially that which is exchanged tit for tat.
"The article seems an attempt at tit-for-tat; but there is too little tat, even in Bedouins, to provoke such a maze of tit as is found in “'Bedouins' and Nomads.”"
- 8 A member of an Iranian people, presently living within Azerbaijan, Armenia and southern Dagestan in Russia.
- 9 Initialism of total air temperature. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
- 10 a projective technique using black-and-white pictures; subjects tell a story about each picture wordnet
- 11 Cheap, tasteless, useless goods; trinkets. British, uncountable
"tourist tat"
- 12 Initialism of thematic apperception test. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
- 13 tastelessness by virtue of being cheap and vulgar wordnet
- 14 Gunny cloth made from the fibre of the Corchorus olitorius (jute). India, countable
- 15 Initialism of turnaround time. abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
- 1 To make (something by) tatting. intransitive, transitive
- 2 To apply a tattoo. slang, transitive
"2016 May 5, Fifth Harmony, “Write on Me”, 7/27, Epic Records, Sysco Music Write on me / Love the way you tat me up"
- 3 make lacework by knotting or looping wordnet
- 1 A southwestern Iranian language spoken by the Tat people.
Example
More examples"The Turkish coup d'état occurred on September 12, 1980."
Etymology
From Hindi टाट (ṭāṭ, “thick canvas”).
Unknown. Perhaps the same as etymology 1, above, or perhaps a back-formation from tatting. Attested since the 19th century.
From Hindi टट्टू (ṭaṭṭū, “pony”).
Clipping of tattoo; see further etymology there.
Ultimately from Proto-Turkic *tāt (“alien, stranger, pagan”).
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.