Etymograph

English

tatter

Tatter comes from Old Norse tǫturr ‘tatters, rags’, and goes back to Proto-Germanic *tat(t)uraz ‘tuft, patch’.

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*tat(t)uraz1‘tuft, patch’reconstructed
  2. Old Norsec. 800–1350tǫturr1‘tatters, rags’
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500tater1
  4. Englishearliest quotation 1896tatter1

attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor

  1. 1 Wiktionary, English tatter
  2. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1896, Well You're a Pretty Kind of Fellow: “You can’t – you shan’t – you don’t –…”.

Earlier history uncertain. See Wiktionary.

Lineage

  1. Proto-Germanicc. 500 BCE–200 CE*tat(t)urazWiktionary, English tatter‘tuft, patch’reconstructed
  2. Old Norsec. 800–1350tǫturrWiktionary, English tatter‘tatters, rags’
  3. Middle Englishc. 1150–1500taterWiktionary, English tatter
  4. Englishearliest quotation 1896tatterWiktionary, English tatter. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1896, Well You're a Pretty Kind of Fellow: “You can’t – you shan’t – you don’t –…”

Linked words

through Proto-Indo-European *deh₂- ‘to split, cut, divide’

academic, demos, endemic, demiurge, teem, 21 more

Today it means

noun A shred of torn cloth; an individual item of torn and ragged clothing.

Sources

Sources: Wiktionary, “tatter”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.

Etymograph / Proto-Germanic *tat(t)uraz / tatter

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