Портной пришил заплатку.

The tailor sewed on the patch.

Breakdown of Портной пришил заплатку.

• портной: the tailor
• заплатка: the fabric patch
• пришить: to sew on

Questions & Answers about Портной пришил заплатку.

What do the two words mean by themselves?

• Портной = tailor
• пришил = sewed on / attached by sewing

And заплатку is the object:

• заплатка = patch
• заплатку = patch in the accusative case

So the sentence is literally something like The tailor sewed on a patch.

Why does портной end in -ой if it means a male person?

Because портной is a masculine noun with a stem pattern that happens to end in -ой in the nominative singular.

This is normal in Russian. Not all masculine nouns end in a consonant. Some end in:

• a consonant, like стол
• -й, like герой
• and some adjective-like occupational words such as портной

So портной is still masculine singular, even though the ending may look unusual at first.

Why is it заплатку and not заплатка?