Patchy means uneven, and good in some parts but not others. Patchy fog, a patchy performance, patchy coverage.
As a criticism it is deadly because it concedes the good parts — patchy is worse than bad in a review, since it says the writer could do better and did not. In weather forecasts patchy fog means fog in places rather than everywhere.
1adjectivepatchyUneven, and good in some parts but not others.
“Her knowledge of history is patchy: she knows a lot about Rome but nothing about China.”
patchy is a quality of unevenness.
Old French
pieche
Proto-Germanic
*plakjō — spot, stain
Proto-West Germanic
*plakkju
Old English
*plæċċ
Middle English
pacche
English
patch
English, today
patchy
Built from
From patch + -y. patch comes from Middle English pacche, of unknown 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”), Swedish plagg (“garment”), Faroese plagg (“cloth, rag”). Or, possibly a variant of Old French pieche, dialectal variant of piece (“piece”). Compare also Old Occitan petaç (“patch”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA