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say it: PAT-urn
pattern is a noun and verb meaning "a perceptual structure". It carries 10 recorded senses.
a customary way of operation or behavior
“it is their practice to give annual raises”
“they changed their dietary pattern”
something regarded as a normative example
“the convention of not naming the main character”
“violence is the rule not the exception”
“his formula for impressing visitors”
a model considered worthy of imitation
“the American constitution has provided a pattern for many republics”
the path that is prescribed for an airplane that is preparing to land at an airport
“the traffic patterns around O'Hare are very crowded”
“they stayed in the pattern until the fog lifted”
graphical representation (in polar or Cartesian coordinates) of the spatial distribution of radiation from an antenna as a function of angle
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for pattern come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.