Batten

Sure he preſum'd of praiſe, vvho came to ſtock / Th' etherial paſtures vvith ſo fair a flock; / Burniſh'd, and bat'ning on their food, to ſhovv / The diligence of carefull herds belovv.

[S]ome fell ſerpent in his cave expects / The traveller's approach, batten'd vvith herbs / Of baneful juice to fury, forth he looks / Hideous, and lies coil'd all around his den.

Could you on this faire Mountaine leaue to feed, / And batten on this Moore?

Follovv your Function, go, and batten on colde bits.

As at full length the pamper'd Monarch lay, / Batt'ning in eaſe, and ſlumbring Life avvay / A ſpightful noiſe his dovvny Chains unties, / Haſtes forvvard, and encreaſes as it flies.

There hath he lain for ages and will lie / Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep, […]

The strong carnivorous eagle, shall wheel down / To meet thee,—self-called to a daily feast,— / And set his fierce beak in thee, and tear off / The long rags of thy flesh, and batten deep / Upon thy dusky liver!

The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks.

Robber barons who battened on the poor

There, in these Dens of Satan, […] do Sieur Motier's mouchards consort and colleague; battening vampyre-like on a People next-door to starvation.

[H]opes he may / VVith charmes, like Æson, haue his youth reſtor'd: / And vvith theſe thoughts ſo battens, as if fate / VVould be as eaſily cheated on, as he, / And all turnes aire!

[T]here are sceptics with a taste for carrion who batten on the hideous facts in history, – persecutions, inquisitions, St. Bartholomew massacres, devilish lives, Nero, Cæsar, Borgia, Marat, Lopez, – men in whom every ray of humanity was extinguished, parricides, matricides, and whatever moral monsters.

The Soile for the moſt part is lifted vp into many hilles, parted aſunder vvith narrovv and ſhort vallies, and a ſhallovv earth doth couer their out-ſide, vvhich by a Sea-vveede called Orevvood, and a certaine kinde of fruitfull Sea-ſand, they make ſo ranke and batten, as is vncredible.

The next morning, we took the battens from the hatches, and opened the ship.

She was too sick to get out of bed, and he was not able to hoist her up without assistance; […] we were permitted to come in and hoist her ladyship up again to the battens.

In carvel construction, the planks which cover the sides of the vessel lie alongside one another without overlapping and the seams are calked. Where the construction is too light to admit calking, a narrow batten or ribband is run along the seams inside.

Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with pitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over the ship's stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin?