▪ I. tater
(ˈteɪtə(r))
Also tator, tatur.
[Dial. variant of potato n. 2. Cf. tatie; tattie.]
1. = potato n. 2.
| 1759 L. Wood Jrnl. 27 May in Essex Inst. Hist. Coll. (1882) XIX. 65 We travelled..9 miles to Capt Curtises and there we Dined upon codfish and taters. 1815 Sporting Mag. XLV. 2 A piece of taters or a few turnips. 1833 Marryat P. Simple xiv, Officers who boil their 'tators in a cabbage⁓net hanging in the ship's coppers. 1848 Thackeray Bk. Snobs xiv, Baked 'taturs. 1884 Gd. Words May 333/2 The other man..plied a vigorous trade in 'taters and trotters. 1911 F. H. Burnett Secret Garden xxiv. 252 Anything'll grow for him. His 'taters and cabbages is twice th' size of anyone else's. 1939 F. Thompson Lark Rise i. 11 Mother spent hours boiling up the ‘little taturs’. 1943 W. Stevens in O. Williams New Poems 1943 236 (title of poem) No possum, no sop, no taters. 1977 New Yorker 27 June 76/3, I et 3 lbs. of taters. |
2. attrib. and Comb. tater-trap slang = tattie-trap s.v. tattie 2.
| 1845 W. T. Porter Big Bear Arkansas 22 Them ar ‘Indian mounds’ ar tater Rills. 1846 Swell's Night Guide 133/2 Tater trap, the mummer, mouth. 1847 J. R. Lowell Biglow Papers 1st Ser. iii. 34 He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes. c 1869 Taylor & Dubourg in M. R. Booth Eng. Plays of 19th Cent. (1973) III. 303 The coal and 'tatur shed where he worked all the week. 1876 I. Banks Manchester Man III. i. 12 Shut up his tater-trap fur him! 1890 P. H. Emerson Wild Life 38, I adwised them fellers at the pub ter keep their tater-traps shut. 1902 W. N. Harben Abner Daniel 198, I got up on the head of a tater-barrel behind the counter. 1917 ‘H. H. Richardson’ Fortunes R. Mahony i. ii. 20 From the back of the hall came the curt request to him to shut his ‘tater-trap’. 1930 Dialect Notes VI. 89 Tater jack, variety of fermented liquor, made in [lumber] camp from potatoes. |
▪ II. tater
obs. form of tatter.