patch

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A piece of material used to cover and repair a hole in clothing or another object.

   His jacket had a leather patch sewn over the worn elbow.

2. 2
   noun

   A small area of ground, or a small area that is different from what surrounds it.

   They grew vegetables in a small patch behind the house.

3. 3
   noun

   A short period of time, especially a difficult one.

   The company went through a rough patch during the recession.

4. 4
   verb

   To repair something by covering a hole or weak spot with a piece of material.

   We need to patch the hole in the roof before it rains.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

The obsolete sense of patch meaning “fool” or “clown,” found in the early 18th-century word crosspatch, perhaps comes from Italian pazzo, meaning “madman.”

From Middle English patche, of uncertain origin. Perhaps an alteration of earlier Middle English placche (“patch, spot, piece of cloth”), from Old English *plæċċ, *pleċċ (“a spot, mark, patch”), from Proto-West Germanic *plakkju, from Proto-Germanic *plakjō (“spot, stain”). For the loss of l compare pat from Middle English platten. Germanic cognates would then include Middle English plecke, dialectal English pleck (“plot of ground, patch”), West Frisian plak (“place, spot”), Low German Plakk, Plakke (“spot, piece, patch”), Dutch plek (“spot, place, stain, patch”), Dutch plak (“piece, slab”), S…

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