patch
Pluralpatches
Verbpatches, patching, patched
Pluralpatches
Formspatches, patching, patched
- 1A piece of cloth or similar material fixed onto a garment to repair or strengthen it, often covering a hole in worn clothing.
She ironed a patch onto the torn knee of her son's pants.
The tailor stitched several patches across the worn fabric.
Note
The everyday mending sense, and the clearest picture of where the word comes from. Its origin is uncertain, but it may be an altered form of Middle English placche, "patch, spot, piece of cloth," which goes back to a Germanic word for a spot or stain. That double meaning, a mended piece and a mark on a surface, runs through the senses that follow. The archaic insult for a fool comes from a different source.
- 2A small area of land or ground, especially a plot set aside for a particular use.
She grew tomatoes in a sunny patch near the fence.
The garden had several patches reserved for herbs.
Note
Ground is often named by what grows on it: a blackberry patch, a blueberry patch, scattered patches of trees or growing corn. The pattern is a noun followed by patch, written as two words, and it suits wild and cultivated ground alike. Families name their own land this way too, as with the pasture by the creek that grandparents called the cow patch.
- 3A small, distinct part of something (in place, time, or size) that contrasts with or differs from the rest.
A patch of blue sky appeared between the clouds.
The team went through a rough patch midway through the season.
Similarspell, stretch, period, area, spot
Note
Here the word stops mending and starts marking off. It names a stretch that differs from what surrounds it, which echoes the old "spot, stain" meaning. It works for space and time alike: patches of ice or cloud, black patches on a white cow. It also appears in the fixed phrase a rough patch, a hard period for an economy, a team or a person. Thin patches of ice show the warning use: the spot where something may give way.
- 4A small piece of material used to repair damage or close a hole or break in something such as a roof or pot.
A patch of sheet metal sealed the rusted spot on the boiler.
The roofer applied several patches to stop the leaks.
- 5A piece of code or data that replaces part of an existing program or file, typically to fix bugs or security flaws.
Developers shipped a patch that replaced the corrupted module.
The security team rolled out patches to several affected servers.
Note
Software borrowed the mender's word. A patch changes a file by replacing one part of it, much as a piece of cloth covers one worn spot. Software patch is the usual pairing, and it reaches well beyond desktop computing. In Modern Railways (2019), Roger Ford describes a Siemens software patch that let shut-down power units recover without a reboot.
- 6To mend something by sewing on a piece of cloth, leather, or similar material.
I patch my work gloves whenever the seams give out.
The seamstress patched the elbows of the worn jacket.
Note
The tailor's verb stretches well beyond cloth. In Mr. Pratt's Patients (1913), Joseph C. Lincoln describes a concertina's bellows "patched in more places than a cranberry picker's overalls." The verb fits naturally into the need + -ing construction: my coat needs patching means the coat needs to be patched.
- 7
- 8A cover worn over a damaged or injured eye to protect it.
The ophthalmologist fitted a patch over the child's stronger eye to strengthen the other.
He wore a patch for weeks while the cornea healed.
- 9An adhesive piece of material containing a drug that is worn on the skin and slowly absorbed over time.
He wears a patch on his arm to curb his nicotine cravings.
The clinic switched her from daily pills to a patch worn on the hip.
Note
Medicine's drug patch works the opposite way from the wound covering. Instead of shielding the skin, it delivers something through it, releasing a drug slowly over time. The usual way to name one is by its drug: a nicotine patch is worn to wean someone off nicotine.
- 10To fix or improve a computer program without replacing or upgrading the whole thing.
Engineers patch the server software as soon as a flaw is found.
The company patched the vulnerability within hours of discovery.
Note
The verb grew out of the noun for replacement data. It first meant to apply a patch to the files in question, then more loosely to fix or improve a program without a full upgrade. Developers patch a flaw or a vulnerability, and a patched system has been repaired in parts rather than replaced.
- 11
- 12To repair or put something together in a hasty or clumsy way, usually expressed with the particle 'up'.
The friends managed to patch up their quarrel after the argument.
She patched up the torn screen door in a few clumsy minutes.
Note
Here the verb almost always takes up, and it is used for relationships as readily as for objects: a truce is patched up, and so is a quarrel. The phrasal verb is separable, so you can patch up a quarrel or patch a quarrel up. It implies a hasty fix that may not last, which sets it apart from plain mending.
- 13
- 14The local area or field that someone is responsible for in their work.
The new manager wanted to learn every client on his patch.
Reporters guard their patch jealously against rival journalists.
Similarterritory, turf, beat, area
Note
A working territory is usually claimed through the possessive: the social worker's patch, a local paper keeping close watch on the news in its patch. The possessive says whose responsibility the ground is. The word belongs to reporters, social workers and others with a district to cover, and it suggests ground known closely and watched over.
- 15A length of cable run between two electrical devices to connect them.
The engineer ran a patch between the amplifier and the speaker cabinet.
She labeled all the patches running into the back of the rack.
Note
The cable sense lives mostly in compounds: patch cable, patch cord, and the patch panel where many such cables meet. On its own, the word can name the cable itself, as in a soundboard patch. The idea is a short link that is easy to swap, and the synthesizer sound setting takes its name from the same cables.
- 16To hook one electrical device up to another by running a cable between them.
The engineer patched the keyboard into the recording console before the session.
They patch each instrument into a separate channel on the mixing board.
Similarplug, connect, wire, route
Oppositedisconnect, unplug
Note
The cable verb takes to or into: patch the preamp output to the mixer, patch a keyboard into the console. It turns the connecting cable into an action, and it suggests a connection that can be undone and rerouted rather than wired in permanently.
- 17To connect two pieces of equipment, or route a call or signal, through a temporary link that can easily be undone, as in a communications system.
The dispatcher patched the incoming call to the duty officer's line.
During the storm, crews patch emergency frequencies into the main network.
- 18A stored sound configuration on a synthesizer, named for the patch cables once used to set it up.
The producer layered three synth patches to build the track's lead sound.
Load the brass patch before the chorus comes in.
Note
A sound named after the wiring that once produced it. Early synthesizers set up a sound by connecting their parts with patch cables, and the name stayed when settings became stored data. By 1988, U-M Computing News could describe synthesizers that store and edit patches, some of them on floppy disks.
- 19
- 20To make something out of pieces or patches, as one makes a quilt.
Her grandmother patched entire bedspreads from worn-out clothing.
Villagers patch sturdy mats together from strips of dried grass.
Similarpiece
- 21
- 22A tiny piece of black silk that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women stuck to the face or throat as a false beauty mark to set off their complexion.
The duchess fixed a small patch beside her eye before the ball.
Your black patches you wear variously.
1625, John Fletcher, Philip MassingerNote
A fashion of the 17th and 18th centuries, so the word now belongs to history and to fiction about that age. In The Elder Brother (1625), John Fletcher and Philip Massinger mention black patches worn "variously," that is, placed in different spots on the face. In Ethel Churchill (1837), Letitia Elizabeth Landon describes placing patches as one step of an elaborate toilette, alongside powder and essences. Today the thing would be called a fake beauty mark.
- 23A small piece of material pushed by hand through a gun barrel to clean it.
She ran a fresh patch down the bore until it came out clean.
Soldiers carried spare patches for cleaning their rifles in the field.
Note
The gun-cleaning patch is a small square of cloth pushed down the bore on a cleaning rod or jag. It carries solvent along the barrel and brings fouling and powder residue out with it, and one is run after another until a patch comes out clean. Keep it distinct from the ball-wrapping patch, which goes down the barrel to be fired rather than to clean.
- 24A piece of greased cloth or leather wrapped around a rifle ball so it fits snugly in the bore.
She centered a greased patch over the muzzle and seated the ball on top.
Worn patches let the ball slip loose and ruined their accuracy.
Note
This is the muzzleloader's patch: greased cloth or thin leather wrapped around the ball before it is pushed down the barrel. The patch grips the rifling so the ball takes spin, and it seals the bore so the powder gases drive the shot instead of slipping past it. A worn patch lets the ball sit loose, and accuracy suffers.
- 25A block placed on the muzzle of a gun to offset the effect of dispart in sighting.
He raised the rear sight and added a patch at the muzzle to level the line of aim.
The old field guns relied on a patch to correct their sighting.
Note
Gunnery's patch corrects a quirk of the barrel. A gun is thicker at the breech than at the muzzle, and that difference, the dispart, tilts any sight line taken along the top of the piece. A block at the muzzle that raises it by the same amount makes the line of sight run parallel to the bore, so the gun can be aimed accurately.
- 26An overlay used to obtain a stronger impression on the printed page.
The pressman built up a patch beneath the tympan to darken the faint headline.
Several patches were added to even out the impression across the form.
Similaroverlay
Note
Letterpress printers used this patch while preparing a job for the press. They added a thin overlay behind the sheet or beneath the printing surface to press harder on one area. Type or a block that would have printed too faintly then came out stronger and more even. Like a mender's patch, it is a small piece added exactly where something falls short.
- 27A butterfly of the genus Chlosyne, a group of New World brushfoot butterflies.
A patch sunned itself on the warm rock with its wings spread wide.
Researchers tagged dozens of patches moving through the canyon.
- 28A worthless or foolish fellow; a rogue or simpleton.
The old miser called his nephew a worthless patch and turned him out.
Such patches loiter about the tavern, begging coins and picking quarrels.
Note
A separate word wearing a borrowed spelling: perhaps from Italian pazzo or paggio, it was drawn toward the form of the patch that mends a garment by folk association. Shakespeare uses it both to someone's face, as in Caliban's "Thou scurvy patch!", and behind someone's back, as when Shylock grumbles that "the patch is kind enough." It is archaic now. Outside period pastiche, readers will hear cloth, not an insult.
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Origins
From Middle English patche, of uncertain origin. It is perhaps an alteration of earlier Middle English placche ("patch, spot, piece of cloth"), from Old English forms meaning "a spot, mark, patch" and ultimately Proto-Germanic *plakjō ("spot, stain"), with related words in West Frisian, Dutch, and Low German. Alternatively, it may be a variant of Old French pieche, a dialectal form of piece.
Perhaps borrowed from Italian pazzo or paggio, the form being influenced by folk etymological association with patch (from the first etymology).