Rattan vs Ratten - What's the difference?

rattan | ratten |

As a noun rattan

is .

As an adjective ratten is

rotten.

rattan

English

(wikipedia rattan) (Calamus)

Noun

(en noun)

Any of several species of climbing palm of the genus .

(lb) The plant used as a material.

A cane made from this material.

*1906 , Walter William Skeat, Charles Otto Blagden, Pagan Races of the Malay Peninsula

*:He who first acts as striker asks the other how many blows of the rattan he will bear on his forearm without crying out.

*:“My Continental prominence is improving,” I commented dryly. ¶ Von Lindowe cut at a furze bush with his silver-mounted rattan . ¶ “Quite so,” he said as dryly, his hand at his mustache. “I may say if your intentions were known your life would not be worth a curse.”

*2008 , Jean-François Bayart, Andrew Brown, Global Subjects: A Political Critique of Globalization

Anagrams

* * English terms derived from Malay

ratten

English

Verb

(en verb)

(obsolete, Northern England) To sabotage machinery or tools as part of an industrial dispute, particularly the tools of a workman who went against the union.

* 1947 , Ivor John Carnegie Brown, Say The Word , p 100:

...derived from the sabot or shoe beneath railway lines. The saboteur was thus a remover of metal shoes, a train-wrecker. I must leave it at that. Meanwhile why not restore ratten to its old place in the Trade Union vocabulary, that is if, in these times of scant, we must endure any such wanton hindrance of the works?

* 1867 , Report Presented to the Trades Unions Commissioners by the Examiners Appointed to Inquire Into Acts of Intimidation, Outrage, Or Wrong Alleged to Have Been Promoted, Encouraged, Or Connived at by Trades Unions in the Town of Sheffield, Great Britain. . G.E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, 1867. p. 225:

Did you also employ them to ratten people if they had broken any rules of your society, for instance, by having too many apprentices?

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