patch

Patch comes from Middle English patche, of uncertain origin. It may be an alteration of earlier Middle English placche, meaning a patch, spot, or piece of cloth, tracing back through Old English *plæċċ or *pleċċ to Proto-Germanic *plakjō, meaning spot or stain. Alternatively, it may derive from Old French pieche, a dialectal form of piece.

The word seems to have wavered between two ideas from the start — a stain or mark, and a piece of cloth — and English settled on the cloth sense we use today.

If the Germanic root is right, patch shares ancestry with Dutch plek (spot, place, stain) and plak (piece, slab), Swedish plagg (garment), and Faroese plagg (cloth, rag) — all circling the same notions of mark and material.