patching

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of patch.

   The crew is patching the cracks before the rain returns.

   Patching the inner tube got us back on the road quickly.

   Note

   One -ing spelling does two grammatical jobs. After be it forms the progressive (the crew is patching the cracks). As a gerund it heads a phrase that acts as a noun (patching the inner tube got us home). Either way it keeps its direct object. That is how to tell it from the noun for the activity, which takes an article and a plural instead: the patching along the seam, patchings.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   The activity of repairing holes, tears, or weak areas by applying pieces of material over them.

   The patching along the seam showed years of careful repair.

   Road crews scheduled patching for the worst sections of the highway.

   Similarmending, repair, repairs

   Note

   The noun can be counted as well as used for the activity in general. Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield (1766) lines up "rufflings, and pinkings, and patchings" as so much dressmaking frippery. In that use, patchings are individual pieces of work you can list one by one, not the job of mending as a whole. The plural is what signals that shift.

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