adjective
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irregular in quality, occurrence, intensity, etc
a patchy essay
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having or forming patches
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of patchy
Explanation
If you describe something as patchy, you mean it's uneven or irregular, like your patchy front lawn with brown spots scattered among the green tufts of grass. Patchy things can appear spotty or mottled in color, or feel rough and bumpy to the touch. If your dog gets fleas and scratches too much, his fur might be patchy. And, if the sky is speckled with clouds, it also looks patchy. You can also call something that's inconsistent patchy: "Your math homework is patchy — some days you do it all, and others you only answer one or two questions."
Vocabulary lists containing patchy
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In the meantime, remaining markets offer patchy selections of fruits and vegetables.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 4, 2026
Factor in the patchy phone service that often occurs at large events, and getting lost is almost inevitable.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
Here it will remain dry with patchy cloud.
From BBC ● Jul. 17, 2026
While the city's iconic Central Park has several grass turf soccer fields, availability is patchy elsewhere in the city where astroturf and concrete surfaces are common.
From Barron's ● Jul. 9, 2026
Fuzzy at first and then it gets patchy with some things so real they are right here now in front of me, and other things stay blurred, and I’m not sure....
From "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes
However, the wet weather is expected to be much patchier further south and east with large swathes of England and Wales forecast to see just a few millimetres at most.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
"In some catchments where permafrost has become patchier, weathering-driven carbon uptake was large enough to offset or even exceed river CO2 emissions."
From Science Daily ● Jun. 20, 2026
And returns on investment have been patchier because of its aggressive spending.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 5, 2025
Surveillance outside of farms was even patchier than on them, and bird flu tests have been hard to get.
From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2024
Despite being undead, he’d grown into adulthood: his fur patchier, his whiskers more snarled, his eye socket wider.
From "The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest" by Aubrey Hartman
The true severity of the problem isn’t always easy to ascertain, because, almost by definition, things tend to be worst in the places where record-keeping is patchiest.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 25, 2015
The Collegiate Chorale lent the music an epic quality; still, its twinkling palette aside, this was the patchiest and least satisfying of the distillations.
From New York Times ● Aug. 14, 2011
It didn’t take long for her to select the most crooked, most pathetic, patchiest pine tree in the bunch.
From "The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street" by Karina Yan Glaser
Closely confined between the Rockies to the right and the Selkirks to the west, the river held undeviatingly to its general northwesterly course, with only the patchiest of flats on either side.
From Down the Columbia by Lewis R. (Lewis Ransome) Freeman
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
