patchery

1. uncountableHypocrisy; trickery.

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

   c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]

   4 more examples

   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.

   c. 1605–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Tymon of Athens”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i]

   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.

   1820 July 20, Dorothy Woodsworth, Journal

   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.

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

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

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

2. uncountableThat which is thrown or sown together usually clumsily or with different color and textures, like patchwork.

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

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

   2 more examples

   [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.

   1856, Henry Mason Baum, “The Ministry a Pleasant Work”, in The Church Review., page 532

   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

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

plural patcheries · alternative parcherry · alternative patcheree · alternative patcherry

1. IndiaUKhistoricalgovernmentLiving quarters for married soldiers.