English

Noun

patchery ‎(countable and uncountable, plural patcheries)

1. Hypocrisy; trickery.
   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, ii 3

     Thersites: Here is ſuch patchery, ſuch juggling and ſuch knavery!

   • a. 1623, William Shakespeare (debated), The Life of Timon of Athens, v 1

     Timon: I, and you heare him cogge, ſee him diſſemble / Know his groſſe patchery, loue him, feede him / Keepe in your boſome: yet ramain aſſur’d / That he’s a made-up villaine.

   • 1820 July 20, Dorothy Woodsworth, Journal

     at Aix-la-Chappelle there is always a mighty preponderance of poverty and dullness, except in a few of the shewiest of the streets, and even there, a flashy meanness, a slight patchery of things falling to pieces is everywhere visible.

   • 1888, Samuel Cox, William Robertson Nicoll, and James Moffatt (editors), “The Books of the Apocrypha”, The Expositor, Hodder and Stoughton, page 340

     the learned Dr. Lightfoot...in a sermon preached in St. Margaret’s, Westminster, before the House of Commons in 1643, spoke of the “wretched Apocrypha” as “a patchery of human invention,” divorcing the end of the law from the beginning of the Gospel.

   • 1978, Derek Roper, Reviewing Before the Edinburgh 1788-1802, University of Delaware Press, ISBN 0874131286, page 281

     It sounds prettily; and is, in parts, very carefully and mystically wrapped up in the gaudy envelope of poetical patchery.

2. That which is thrown or sown together usually clumsily or with different color and textures, like patchwork.
   • 1856, Henry Mason Baum, “The Ministry a Pleasant Work”, The Church Review., page 532

     [The Clergy] find all that is absolutely requisite, provided in some way or other; they succeed in feeding, clothing, and educating their children, and live in sufficient comfort not to feel the ridicule which belong to dilapidation and patchery.

   • 1863, “Naples and Lake Avernus”, The Eagle., volume 3, W. Metcalfe (Cambridge), page 285

     The Chinese mourn in white, and some of us in Harlequin-like patchery, as though believing motley to be the only wear.

   • 1998, Gioia Timpanelli, “Rusina, Not Quite in Love”, Sometimes the Soul, Two Novellas of Sicily, W. W. Norton & Company (Sicily), ISBN 0393027449, page 131

     In the corner next to the oven was a huge heap of black rags covering the couch. Among the patchery was a large piece of tapestry

3. (Britain, military, historical) Living quarters for married soldiers.