- mend
- mend vb Mend, repair, patch, rebuild are comparable when they mean to put into good or fitting order something that is injured, damaged, or defective.Mend basically implies a freeing from faults or defects{
mend your manners
}{the wound mended slowly
}but in its most common use it specifically suggests a process of making whole or sound something that has been broken, torn, or injured (as by wear or use). In such use the term is especially applicable when the task calls for no extraordinary skill or unusual equipment; thus, one mends a dress by sewing up tears, darning holes, or reinforcing worn spots{mend a broken dish with glue
}{mending the stone wall with cobbles from the field
}{over here the roads were never mended unless a few of the farmers agreed to give so much labor— Glasgow
}Often, and especially in extended use, mend stresses the resulting putting in order without much regard to the nature of the means of its attainment{he mended the fire while he was speaking and the glow fell over the darkened room— Roberts
}{whenever civilization palled upon him, he learned to mend his soul by going to sea— Erskine
}Repair is often interchangeable with mend in the sense of to make whole or sound, but typically it implies greater or more professional skill by the performer and usually correspondingly greater complexity both in the task involved and in the equipment used; thus, an old-time cobbler mended shoes so that they were good for further use but a modern specialist may repair them so well that his work cannot be detected; a boy may know how to repair a car but be unable to do so for lack of essential tools{mending refers to minor restoration, not involving the replacement of any material or the separation of book from cover .... Repairing is the partial rehabilitation of a worn book, the amount of work done being less than the minimum involved in rebinding and more than the maximum involved in mending— Library Jour.
}In extended use, too, repair may be quite like mend{the plain fact is that peace— or what passed for peace before it was broken—cannot be mended, cannot be repaired, cannot be restored— MacLeish
}but often it more specifically implies a making good or making up for something{reminds himself that he had not wept for the death of his mother a year or so earlier, and proceeds to repair the omission— Times Lit. Sup.
}{although his range of reading was wide, he could not in some respects repair the lack of early education— Collis
}Patch basically implies a mending by covering, filling in, or reinforcing such a defect as a hole, rent, or weak spot, typically with the same or a similar material{patch overalls worn thin at the knee
}{patch holes in the road with asphalt
}{patch an inner tube
}Sometimes, often with up, it implies careless, hurried, clumsy, or temporary mending{$4,800,000 appropriated to start a new prison in New Jersey has been since diverted to patch up the 118-year-old penal slum at Trenton— O'Leary
}and in much of its extended use this is the aspect stressed{he hastily tries to patch up his marriage and purify his politics— Bentley
}{relations between the two men had to be patched up repeatedly— Ishbel Ross
}Sometimes, often with together, patch implies a making from bits and pieces or odds and ends{patch a quilt
}{patch a car together from pieces out of the junkyard
}{his life must be patched together from scattered references in the contemporary colonial records— J. T. Adams
}Rebuild, which normally means to build again something which has been razed or ruined, is often preferred in industry and business to repair because it implies a thoroughgoing repairing with addition of new parts when necessary that makes a thing like new{a rebuilt typewriter
}{rebuild a carburetor
}
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
