Botched

How to spell botched

7 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce botched

What does botched mean?

1. adjectiveCarried out so clumsily or incompetently that the result is spoiled.
2. verbPast tense of botch: ruined something through clumsy or careless handling.

Botched in a sentence

• adjective

  The surgeon was sued over a botched operation.

• verb

  The team botched the product launch by missing the deadline.

• adjective

  The contractor left a botched paint job all over the trim.

• verb

  He botched the negotiation and lost the contract.

Where does botched come from?

Language of origin: Unknown

This is the past form of the verb 'botch', which appears in English in the late 1300s as the Middle English 'bocchen', meaning simply 'to repair or patch'. At first there was nothing negative about it: a botcher was a mender of old clothes or shoes, someone who patched things up. Over the following centuries the sense soured, and 'botch' came to mean repairing or making something so clumsily that the result is a mess, which is the meaning that survives today. The ultimate root is genuinely obscure; lexicographers cannot trace it confidently beyond Middle English, and it may simply be an everyday workshop word that never left a written trail. The spelling trap lies in the silent, soft '-tch' cluster followed by '-ed', since the ending sounds like a plain 't' yet must be written 'tched'.

How the word is built

• botch (to repair clumsily, of uncertain origin)
• -ed (past tense / past participle suffix)