Definition of "patches" []

• Plural form of patch. (noun)
• Third-person singular simple present indicative form of patch. (verb)

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• "Finding we could not weather the reef, and that _it was too late had it been in our power to give any assistance_; and still fearing that we might be embayed or entangled by the supposed chain or patches; all therefore that remained for us to do was either by dint of carrying sail to weather the reef to the southward, (meaning the Cato's Bank,) or, if failing in that, to push to leeward and endeavour to find a passage through the _patches of reef_ to the northward."
• "Hier, the sky was bright in patches and the sun shone down across the barren field below and cast clouds across the campagne."
• "The waggle-dance of these remarkable insects – a symbolic system of behavioral communication that conveys information on direction and relative distances to flower patches from the hive, and is perhaps the most complex form of communication known outside the world of humans – would not be discovered for another hundred years."