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What is "patch"

Crossword clues for patch

patch
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
patch
I.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a rough patch (=a difficult time that does not last long)
▪ He was good at encouraging his team when it hit a rough patch.
a vegetable garden/patch/plot
▪ Anna was digging in the vegetable garden.
bald patch (=part of someone’s head where there is no hair)
▪ He combed his hair and tried to hide his bald patch .
eye patch
hit a snag/problems/a bad patch etc
▪ My father hit a bad patch, he had to sell the house.
nicotine patch
patch up a quarrelBritish English (= end it)
▪ The brothers eventually patched up their quarrel.
patches of fog (=fog that forms in some places but not in others)
▪ Patches of fog are expected later today.
soul patch
sticky patchBritish English
▪ The business hit a sticky patch and lost £4.8 million.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
bad
▪ Their worst patch was in 1989 and 1990, before recession really bit.
▪ Talk about hitting a bad patch.
▪ Even when they knew he was going through a bad patch they would continue to deliver dangerous back-passes to him.
▪ Having hit a bad patch, financially, I decided I must try for some paid work with my knitting machine.
▪ Every team goes through a bad patch.
▪ They forget that we have gone through bad patches before.
▪ She had gone through rather a bad patch since she had come to live in the banqueting hall.
▪ It is currently going through a bad patch of such uncertainty.
bald
▪ My hair falls out at the slightest touch, sometimes leaving little bald patches.
▪ But this can just mean patchy regrowth, with bald patches, not the whole leg of hair disappearing.
▪ Same-shaped bald patch, same fringe of white hair.
▪ If you crick your neck you might spot the odd bald patch, too!
▪ I noticed a small bald patch on the crown of his head.
▪ It was thin and ragged, and folded forward to hide a growing bald patch.
▪ More so than the bald patch at the back of his head.
black
▪ Generally darker than Collared Dove, with chestnut upperparts, and black and white patch on either side of neck.
▪ Overhead, a black patch of pine needles caught in the troughs of the milky green roof.
▪ A white background to this black patch is set in otherwise clear finnage.
▪ Those black patches on the surface, they'd be dead leaves.
▪ The black patch in the top left corner of the image area is a small reservoir.
▪ The scattering of windows had become black patches behind iron bars.
bright
▪ She had a bright red patch on each cheek.
▪ The bark had been stripped away leaving a bright damp patch.
▪ A single pale, bright patch, from which two black skeletons leered down at him.
clear
▪ He made the most of the clear patches of brilliant blue sky fleetingly appearing through the white storm clouds.
damp
▪ His parents had detected a smell in the room over the past few weeks and had noticed a damp patch.
▪ The bark had been stripped away leaving a bright damp patch.
▪ You can look for damp patches though, particularly on outside walls.
▪ Look at the gutters and downpipes for damp patches, and look out for water marks and white salts.
dark
▪ He was thin, and there appeared to be dark patches growing in through the grey of his beard.
▪ Grey plover: ash grey with feathers white-tipped, the diagnostic dark patch of feathers beneath its wings.
▪ Duck has dark patch on cheek, bill all grey.
▪ At first it looked like a dark patch of space.
▪ It is physiologically unsettling to gaze out from a dark patch into a brighter one.
▪ In the middle of the screen was the same dark patch.
▪ As she dropped her hand, a dark red patch began to emerge against the tan of his skin.
difficult
▪ Ruefully, she recalled her pleasure at the way the book, after a difficult patch, had begun to develop.
▪ St Matthew's School has gone through a difficult patch in the last few years.
green
▪ She seemed to take a fancy to a green patch further into the field and began to amble slowly towards it.
▪ The basic colouration is greyish-blue to green, with a pearly iridescence and blue to green iridescent patches on the scales.
▪ New, well-constructed houses are springing up all over West Belfast on every available piece of waste ground or green patch.
▪ However, if it is only green in small patches, these should be peeled or cut away during preparation.
▪ There are remains of old buildings on a green patch on the shore below.
large
▪ Yellow on crown: Three-toed male. Large white patch on wing.
▪ The first is cocoa brown with large irregular white patches.
▪ Within days of the first autumn frosts a large brown patch of vines can be seen growing out from this area.
▪ Picture your garden bed of cucumbers, a very large patch of them, a bumper crop.
▪ There were large patches of material missing from the tape's coating.
▪ The Blue Fog features large patches of rust, an oil leak, a loose handle and a temperamental pull cord.
▪ I opened a bedroom door, and could smell damp; there was a large patch on the wall.
▪ The large patches of green mold on its dark gray walls look like islands on a dry, concrete sea.
little
▪ We sat down on the little grass patch where the strolling players set up their tent.
▪ Extracted from a tough little patch of turf with no small effort.
▪ Leave me and the children in our little patch of civilization.
▪ As the snow accumulates from that little boreal patch, growing inexorably year after year, gargantuan ice sheets begin to form.
▪ The hills rolled and folded into each other, hiding little patches of dead ground.
pale
▪ Duck and juvenile have a pale patch on either side of eye on otherwise dark face.
▪ Gradually the pale patches of fresh plaster spread across the blackened walls.
▪ A single pale, bright patch, from which two black skeletons leered down at him.
purple
▪ Talk of his absence coinciding with our recent purple patch can't have helped.
▪ Ian and a friend bagged 90 cod in just two hours in one purple patch.
▪ Were they a coincidence or are you going through a purple patch at the moment?
▪ It is neither a purple patch nor is it coincidence.
▪ There are very few purple patches whereas the outdoor game - tactically - can be slow.
▪ A 15-minute purple patch in which they scored 19 points a 22-14 win Durham City.
red
▪ They all have rough red patches like coins on their cheeks, small, tough-skinned hands, and feet encrusted with mud.
▪ I've now noticed red patches starting to appear, a sign of deteriorating water quality, I know.
▪ She had a bright red patch on each cheek.
▪ Male usually with red patch on head.
▪ As she dropped her hand, a dark red patch began to emerge against the tan of his skin.
rough
▪ The film has its rough patches: particularly the implausible speed with which Jeanne catches on to something being amiss with Mika.
▪ She had been a major influence in my life, and helped me through the rough patches.
▪ The Royal Family is certainly going through a rough patch.
▪ They all have rough red patches like coins on their cheeks, small, tough-skinned hands, and feet encrusted with mud.
▪ It fills in rough patches on the cuticle and give a light-reflecting finish.
▪ When the company I work for went through a rough patch, there were no pay rises for two years.
▪ My boyfriend and I were going through a very rough patch at the time.
small
▪ There, dried in, the small patch of blood.
▪ She touches the small colorful patches with her index finger, and laughs.
▪ A smaller patch of lesser quality vines extends southwards on to the north-east-facing slopes of Mont Aimé.
▪ Accordingly, what small patches of old growth we have now remaining are all that we will ever have.
▪ Often but not always there is a small white face patch behind the bill.
▪ It sees a small round patch but also a surrounding ring.
▪ The metropolis also houses a host of smaller patches of urban wasteland from a few hundred square metres to several hectares.
▪ They had a small patch of land on which to grow food.
sticky
▪ Evode has gone through a sticky patch.
▪ During a sticky patch in her relationship with Paul she bedded a 19-year-old holidaymaker in Ibiza.
tiny
▪ Did you spot that tiny patch of freckles on her left cheek?
▪ Many peasants owned their tiny patches of soil.
▪ It sees a tiny patch of the visual field measuring a few degrees of visual angle across.
▪ You see this tiny patch where the material is paler.
▪ It was an end-of-terrace with rounded bays overlooking the road and a tiny patch of grass at the front.
▪ Binoculars will show quite a number of globulars, though in most cases only as tiny, blurred patches.
▪ A typical example is Chteau de Valandraud, made from grapes grown on a tiny patch of vineyard in St-Emilion.
white
▪ Then his startled gaze met the glowing eyes above the white patch of the handkerchief the man was holding at his mouth.
▪ The first is cocoa brown with large irregular white patches.
▪ There are other people who have sun-tans that leave white patches on their arms.
▪ Some of the alders held overwintering white patches of woolly aphids on their gray stems.
▪ Generally darker than Collared Dove, with chestnut upperparts, and black and white patch on either side of neck.
▪ It was large and black with a round white patch on its chest.
▪ On each plain scarlet wing shell is a rectangular white cloth patch edged on each side with narrow white lace.
▪ Adult tawny brown, sometimes with pale head; immature distinguished by white base of tail and white patch on spread wing.
■ NOUN
eye
▪ There was no limp, no eye patch, no tricks.
▪ He waited, hoping she would go back to the kitchen so he could work on the eye patch.
▪ I don't think the other children bully her too much or make fun of her because of her eye patch.
home
▪ Bénéteau went to town in their usual impressive way; it is, after all, their home patch.
■ VERB
hit
▪ Having hit a bad patch, financially, I decided I must try for some paid work with my knitting machine.
▪ Talk about hitting a bad patch.
▪ You could then skip the files on the troublesome disk until you hit a good patch.
▪ And that was when she hit a wet patch on the tarmac and felt the car go out of control.
▪ The front wheels began to slip, and then the rear wheels hit the ice patch and they too began to spin.
▪ Provided I could hit the patches of sand quickly enough and keep the momentum, the wheel would skate across.
▪ The market for recycled material has recently hit a bad patch with falling prices.
▪ Sometimes I am a real power pack of efficiency; then I hit a bad patch.
wear
▪ He lost an eye at the Battle of the Jaws, and wears an iron patch to cover the wound.
▪ But not one of them wore the patch of the Tropic Lightning Division.
▪ Patients who wore them were almost twice as likely to break the habit as those who wore a dummy patch.
▪ We had a beatnik poet who wore salami patches on his tweed sport coat.
▪ More than 1,600 smokers were asked to wear an arm patch for 3 months.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
purple patch
▪ A 15-minute purple patch in which they scored 19 points a 22-14 win Durham City.
▪ Ian and a friend bagged 90 cod in just two hours in one purple patch.
▪ It is neither a purple patch nor is it coincidence.
▪ Talk of his absence coinciding with our recent purple patch can't have helped.
▪ There are very few purple patches whereas the outdoor game - tactically - can be slow.
▪ Were they a coincidence or are you going through a purple patch at the moment?
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Patches of grease covered the kitchen walls.
▪ a nicotine patch
▪ a pumpkin patch
▪ a white kitten with black patches
▪ Both knees of his jeans had patches on them.
▪ Detective McCready had taken over; he didn't want us on his patch.
▪ I noticed a patch of dirt in the middle of the rug.
▪ Morris is going through one of the roughest patches of his presidency.
▪ The car hit an icy patch on the road and went out of control.
▪ There's a damp patch under the window.
▪ There were some darker patches on the carpet.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A smaller patch of lesser quality vines extends southwards on to the north-east-facing slopes of Mont Aimé.
▪ He tied his horse to a tree outside this bushy patch and left him grazing.
▪ He told me to be more aggressive in representing my patch.
▪ She touches the small colorful patches with her index finger, and laughs.
▪ The rising sun slowly turns the drab greys and dull browns of the mountains to patches of pale gold and dusty pinks.
▪ There are other people who have sun-tans that leave white patches on their arms.
▪ There are small patches with the emblems of sports cars sewn at odd, playful angles on the front.
▪ There was an ugly, scorched patch right in the middle of the skirt.
II.verb
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
difference
▪ But the pair, openly hostile by the end of last year, will patch up their mutual differences.
▪ But though they patched up their difference, they did not change; they were both strong-minded women.
▪ Phil Coleman ... patched up his differences with Steve Dowman at Wivenhoe.
▪ And the couple are now taking an early-break break from their civic duties to patch up their differences.
■ VERB
try
▪ Colin and Dawn fell in love when Dawn tried to help them patch things up.
▪ The bullpen is a hodgepodge the Phillies are trying to patch with castoffs from other teams.
▪ Hospital staff sent him home to try to patch things up with his hot-tempered wife.
▪ How long do we try to patch up a failing plan?
▪ I've been trying to patch it up.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ And the couple are now taking an early-break break from their civic duties to patch up their differences.
▪ He patched through it somehow, though.
▪ He had been wounded four times-and patched up, and sent back to war.
▪ Rip one seam and the coat will patch itself on the spot.
▪ Their planking was patched with corrugated iron, their roofs shingled with flattened tin cans.
▪ They built timber groynes and constructed chalk banks and patched up breaches as they occurred.
▪ Trash collection has improved, he said, leaf pickup has resumed and more than 35, 000 potholes have been patched.
Related phrases:
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Patch

Patch \Patch\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Patched; p. pr. & vb. n. Patching.]

  1. To mend by sewing on a piece or pieces of cloth, leather, or the like; as, to patch a coat.

  2. To mend with pieces; to repair with pieces festened on; to repair clumsily; as, to patch the roof of a house.

  3. To adorn, as the face, with a patch or patches.

    Ladies who patched both sides of their faces.
    --Spectator.

  4. To make of pieces or patches; to repair as with patches; to arrange in a hasty or clumsy manner; -- generally with up; as, to patch up a truce. ``If you'll patch a quarrel.''
    --Shak.

Patch

Patch \Patch\, n. [OE. pacche; of uncertain origin, perh. for placche; cf. Prov. E. platch patch, LG. plakk, plakke.]

  1. A piece of cloth, or other suitable material, sewed or otherwise fixed upon a garment to repair or strengthen it, esp. upon an old garment to cover a hole.

    Patches set upon a little breach.
    --Shak.

  2. Hence: A small piece of anything used to repair a breach; as, a patch on a kettle, a roof, etc.

  3. A small piece of black silk stuck on the face, or neck, to hide a defect, or to heighten beauty.

    Your black patches you wear variously.
    --Beau. & Fl.

  4. (Gun.) A piece of greased cloth or leather used as wrapping for a rifle ball, to make it fit the bore.

  5. Fig.: Anything regarded as a patch; a small piece of ground; a tract; a plot; as, scattered patches of trees or growing corn.

    Employed about this patch of ground.
    --Bunyan.

  6. (Mil.) A block on the muzzle of a gun, to do away with the effect of dispart, in sighting.

  7. A paltry fellow; a rogue; a ninny; a fool. [Obs. or Colloq.] ``Thou scurvy patch.''
    --Shak.

    Patch ice, ice in overlapping pieces in the sea.

    Soft patch, a patch for covering a crack in a metallic vessel, as a steam boiler, consisting of soft material, as putty, covered and held in place by a plate bolted or riveted fast.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
patch

mid-15c., from patch (n.1). Electronics sense of "to connect temporarily" is attested from 1923. Related: Patched; patching.

patch

"piece of cloth used to mend another material," late 14c., of obscure origin, perhaps a variant of pece, pieche, from Old North French pieche (see piece (n.)), or from an unrecorded Old English word (but Old English had claðflyhte "a patch"). Phrase not a patch on "nowhere near as good as" is from 1860.

patch

"fool, clown," 1540s, perhaps from Italian pazzo "fool," of unknown origin. Possibly from Old High German barzjan "to rave" [Klein]. But Buck says pazzo is originally euphemistic, and from Latin patiens "suffering," in medical use, "the patient." Form perhaps influenced by folk etymology derivation from patch (n.1), on notion of a fool's patched garb.

Wiktionary
patch

Etymology 1 n. 1 A piece of cloth, or other suitable material, sewed or otherwise fixed upon a garment to repair or strengthen it, especially upon an old garment to cover a hole. 2 A small piece of anything used to repair damage or a breach; as, a patch on a kettle, a roof, etc. 3 A repair intended to be used for a limited time; (differs from previous usage in that it is intended to be a temporary fix and the size of the repair is irrelevant).
This usage can mean that the repair is temporary because it is an early but necessary step in the process of properly, completely repairing something, 4 A small, usually contrasting but always somehow different or distinct, part of something else (location, time, size); 5 (qualifier: specifically) A small area, a small plot of land or piece of ground. 6 An area of professional responsibility 7 A small piece of black silk stuck on the face or neck to heighten beauty; an imitation beauty mark. 8 (context medicine English) A piece of material used to cover a wound. 9 (context medicine English) An adhesive piece of material, impregnated with a drug, which is worn on the skin; the drug being slowly absorbed over a period of time. 10 (context medicine English) A cover worn over a damaged eye, an eyepatch. 11 A block on the muzzle of a gun, to do away with the effect of dispart, in sighting. 12 (context computing English) A patch file, a file used for input to a patch program or that describes changes made to a computer file or files, usually changes made to a computer program that fix a programming bug. 13 A small piece of material that is manually passed through a gun barrel to clean it. 14 A piece of greased cloth or leather used as wrapping for a rifle ball, to make it fit the bore. 15 {{context|often|'''patch cable''', '''patch cord'''(,) etc.; see also patch panel|lang=en}} A cable connecting two pieces of electrical equipment. 16 A sound setting for a musical synthesizer (originally selected by means of a patch cable). vb. To mend by sewing on a piece or pieces of cloth, leather, or the like; as, to patch a coat. Etymology 2

n. (context archaic English) A paltry fellow; a rogue; a ninny; a fool.

Related phrases:
WordNet
patch

  1. v. to join or unite the pieces of; "patch the skirt" [syn: piece]

  2. provide with a patch; also used metaphorically; "The field was patched with snow"

  3. mend by putting a patch on; "patch a hole" [syn: patch up]

  4. repair by adding pieces; "She pieced the china cup" [syn: piece]

patch

  1. n. a small contrasting part of something; "a bald spot"; "a leopard's spots"; "a patch of clouds"; "patches of thin ice"; "a fleck of red" [syn: spot, speckle, dapple, fleck, maculation]

  2. a small area of ground covered by specific vegetation; "a bean plot"; "a cabbage patch"; "a briar patch" [syn: plot, plot of ground]

  3. a piece of cloth used as decoration or to mend or cover a hole

  4. a period of indeterminate length (usually short) marked by some action or condition; "he was here for a little while"; "I need to rest for a piece"; "a spell of good weather"; "a patch of bad weather" [syn: while, piece, spell]

  5. a short set of commands to correct a bug in a computer program

  6. a connection intended to be used for a limited time [syn: temporary hookup]

  7. sewing or darning that repairs a worn or torn hole (especially in a garment); "her stockings had several mends" [syn: mend, darn]

  8. a protective cloth covering for an injured eye [syn: eyepatch]

  9. a piece of soft material that covers and protects an injured part of the body [syn: bandage]

Related phrases:
Gazetteer
Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Patch

Patch may refer to:

Patch (Unix)

The computer tool patch is a Unix program that updates text files according to instructions contained in a separate file, called a patch file. The patch file (also called a patch for short) is a text file that consists of a list of differences and is produced by running the related diff program with the original and updated file as arguments. Updating files with patch is often referred to as applying the patch or simply patching the files.

Patch (computing)

A patch is a piece of software designed to update a computer program or its supporting data, to fix or improve it. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, with such patches usually called bugfixes or bug fixes, and improving the usability or performance. Although meant to fix problems, poorly designed patches can sometimes introduce new problems (see software regressions). In some special cases updates may knowingly break the functionality, for instance, by removing components for which the update provider is no longer licensed or disabling a device.

Patch management is the process of using a strategy and plan of what patches should be applied to which systems at a specified time.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "patch".

Then, blundering about and bellowing like a wounded rhino, he staggered out front and shoveled a big sluiceway in the recently patched ditch bank, allowing almost the entire acequia flow to cascade into his already soggy front vega.

This is the reason why nicotine patches are not addictive while cigarettes, which contain the same quantity of nicotine, are.

Moving his saddle and pack onto Patch, Alec slung his bow over one shoulder and followed Seregil onto the Cirna highroad.

Unslinging his bow with surprising speed, Alec brought down two of the great birds and nudged Patch into a canter to retrieve them.

Heart hammering in his throat, Alec turned Patch and galloped back to find Seregil.

As the aeroplane tore higher into the thin atmosphere, out of the window Mandelstim could see the many, many camps, each a white clearing in the forest, like patches of nervous alopecia in a dark green beard.

At age sixteen, I developed alopecia areata, a condition that causes patches of baldness in an otherwise healthy head of hair.

Where Anele pointed, in a notch between slick stones at the lapping edge of the water, lay a roughly triangular patch of fine sand.

There were patches of anhydrous red oxide of iron in protected places upon it, such as could not have been formed upon any fraudulent object.

Paullini and Riedlin, as well as the Ephemerides, speak of different colored hair in the same head, and it is not at all rare to see individuals with an anomalously colored patch of hair on the head.

A patch of ocher plaster on the wall opposite the window was cracked in a spiderweb pattern, and in the center of the web stood an arbalest bolt.

He was ravenous for the buttermilk, and when he stretched on the bench in the arbour the flickering patches of sunlight so tantalized his tired eyes, while the bees made such splendid music, he was soon sound asleep.

But the mutie made no attempt to stop Ryan and the Armorer from leaving the blood-sodden, cratered patch of forest.

At last he arose and limped ahead toward the forested patch, dividing his weight between his game leg and his staff.

The former would try to rip the fabric asunder, the latter to patch it.