A fool; so called from the motley or patched dress worn by licensed fools.
“What a pied ninny’s this! thou scurvy patch!”
Shakespeare: The Tempest, iii. 2.
Cross-patch. An ill-tempered person. (See above.)
Not a patch upon. Not to be compared with; as, “His horse is not a patch upon mine,” “My patch is better than his garment.”
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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.
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