Batten Down The Hatches

Today the new word is batten, pay attention, not fatten.

We should master two major meanings of this word:

1. To become fat.

Batten/Fatten one's bank account.

2. To thrive and prosper, especially at another's expense:

She battens like a leech on the lives of famous people, a professional retailer of falsehoods.

Slumlords who batten on the poor.

Besides these two meanings, we should also try to remember an idiom containing the word batten.

batten down the hatches

It means to prepare yourself for a difficult period by protecting yourself in every possible way.

Examples:

When you're coming down with a cold, all you can do is batten down the hatches and wait for the body to fight it off.

They just have to batten down the hatches, lighten the load and ride this thing out.