A variant spelling or obsolete form referring to a flat-bottomed boat, related to bateau.
From Old French 'batel,' a predecessor to modern French 'bateau.' This is an earlier form of the word before standardized spelling emerged.
Words like 'batel' are linguistic fossils—they appear in medieval documents but were gradually replaced by 'bateau' as French and English standardized spelling, showing how languages 'clean up' their vocabulary over centuries.
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