Word.ws English Dictionary

purple patches

purple patches is the plural of purple patch.

Meaning of purple patch

Noun

purple patch (plural purple patches)

  1. A period of excellent performance where nearly everything seems to go right, contrasting with a lower general level of performance.
    • He came with a disconcerting black-eye that he wouldn’t explain. “Not so much a black-eye,” he said, “as the aftermath of a purple patch.... What’s your difficulty?”1908, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “The Dawn Comes, and My Uncle Appears in a New Silk Hat”, in Tono-Bungay […], Toronto, Ont.: The Macmillan Company of Canada, Ltd., →OCLC, 2nd book (The Rise of...
  2. (originally) An ornate or elaborate section of a written work; a patch of purple prose.
    • To the picket Private Copper held forth for ten minutes on the life-history of his captive. Allowing for some purple patches, it was an absolute fair rendering.1904, Rudyard Kipling, “The Comprehension of Private Copper”, in Traffics and Discoveries, London: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC

Questions about purple patches

What is purple patches the plural of?
Purple patches is the plural of purple patch.

Words near purple patches in the dictionary

  1. purple ochre
  2. purple ochres
  3. purple of Cassius
  4. purple passion
  5. purple patch
  6. purple patches
  7. Purple Pedosaur
  8. purple pill
  9. purple pills
  10. purple pitcher plant
  11. purple pitcher plants

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: purple patches (page history and authors); purple patch (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “purple patches.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/purple_patches. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.