fitch

plural fitches

1. A polecat, such as the European polecat (Mustela putorius), the striped polecat, steppe polecat, or black-footed polecat of America.

   Striped fitch has coarser hair and is not so valuable.

   1948, Kay Hardy, Costume Design

   3 more examples

   The more beautiful of the two comes from a North American species, the black-footed pole-cat (No. 3), which is creamy yellow, sprinkled with black. Made-up skins of this species are sold as "natural fitch" to distinguish them from those of the common fitch, which are generally dyed. The finest skins of this pole-cat, now nearly extinct in Great Britain, are procured from the colder parts of Russia and Siberia.

   1914, Herbert Greenhough Smith, The Strand Magazine, page 510

   Not only as it been quite difficult to eliminate the yellow tinge from the dyed fur, but practically every fur dyer has had to admit his inability to make the dyed fitch permanent in color or prevent it from very quickly turning or fading to a sickening shade of red […]

   1922, American Furrier, page 23

   Putorius eversmanni michnoi Kastsch, Transbaikalian steppe fitch. No specimens were collected by the Expedition, but a single skull of an adult male was received from a Russian trapper who secured it during the past[…]

   1936, Journal of Mammalogy, volumes 17-18, page 327

2. A skin of a polecat.

   For those who cannot afford the luxury of real fur, the most picturesque and delightful substitute is offered in stoles and muffs made up of plush-pony skin trimmed with a piece of natural fitch set slant-ways across the front of the muff […]

   1914, Ford Madox Ford, The English Review

plural fitches

1. A kind of twisted open weave in wickerwork.

present singular third person fitches · participle present fitching · participle past fitched · past fitched

1. To use this kind of open weave.

plural fitches

1. alternativeobsoleteAlternative form of vetch.

   Snail clover (sainfoin), gallion or petty muggalt, wild fitch and haver (oat) grass were all recommended as profitable forage, but what the second was I do not know.

   2019, G. E. Fussell, The English Dairy Farmer: 1500-1900

   3 more examples

   1. Colutæa vesicaria vulgaris sylvestris. Ordinary Bastard Sene with bladders. This greater Bastard Sene groweth in time to be a tree of a reasonable greatnesse, the stem or trunck being of the bignesse of a mans arme or greater, covered with a blackish greene ragged barke, the wood whereof is harder then of an Elder, but with a pith in the middle of the branches which are divided many wayes, having divers winged leaves composed of many small round pointed or rather flat pointed leaves, set at severall distances, and somewhat like unto Licoris, or the Hatchet fitch, among which come forth yellow flowers like unto Broome flowers and as large; after which come thinne swelling cods, like unto thinne transparent bladders; wherein are conteined blacke seede set upon a middle ribbe within the bladders, which being alittle crushed betweene the fingers, will give a cracke like a bladder full of winde: the roote groweth great and wooddy, branching forth divers wayes.

   1640, John Parkinson, Theatrum Botanicum, London: Thomas Cotes, page 226

   Fitches or Vetches are of divers Sorts, of which before; but since our Author's Time, several new Grasses have been found out, which supply the same Defect. Those which are most in Request, at present are, Clove, Ray-grass, Nonesuch and St. Fein.

   1744, Thomas Tusser, Tusser redivivus. Five hundred points of husbandry ... To which are added, Notes and observations by Daniel Hilman explaining many obsolete terms, etc

   If these plants are young, the weeders do not see them; and in this case, when they grow larger, the land must be again weeded. But the small plants, which are not less prejudicial, such as the wild Fitch, the wild Oat, Darnel, Fennel-flower, Knot-grass, Restharrow, Fox-tail, the several sorts of Bindweed, (Convolvulus) and all the small Poppies, remain in the field.

   1764, Duhamel du Monceau, translated by Philip Miller, The Elements of Agriculture, volume 1, page 265

plural Fitches · alternative Fidge

1. countableuncountableA surname from Old French.
2. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Caswell County, North Carolina, United States.