Patter is a prepared and practiced speech that is designed to produce a desired response from its audience. Examples of occupations with a patter might include the auctioneer, salesperson, dance caller, magician, or comedian. The term may have been a colloquial shortening of "Pater Noster", or the Lord's Prayer, and may have referred to the practice of mouthing or mumbling prayers quickly and mechanically. In some circumstances, the talk becomes a different sense of "patter": to make a series of rapid strokes or pats, as of raindrops. Here, it is a form of onomatopoeia.