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1913, John Buchan, Andrew Jameson, Lord Ardwall, page 136:
An' as they breisted the lang lang hill / The puir horse graned and peched.
1933, Lewis Grassic Gibbon, Cloud Howe (A Scots Quair), Polygon, published 2006, page 321:
Then Chris saw Bruce, the porter, come in, with the mark on his jaw where his godfather hit him, then Leslie, the smith, paiching and sweating, he dropped his stick with an awful clatter.
The sense “breakdown” is a Dutch innovation. It is probably modelled on the word ongeluk, which means both “bad luck, misfortune” and “accident”. Since pech typically denotes a lesser kind of bad luck, it came to be used for a lesser kind of traffic accident too. German uses Panne instead; compare Dutchpanne.
pech in Bárczi, Géza and László Országh. A magyar nyelv értelmező szótára (‘The Explanatory Dictionary of the Hungarian Language’, abbr.: ÉrtSz.). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1959–1962. Fifth ed., 1992: →ISBN
2002 December 13, Magdalena Grochowalska, “Szczęśliwa trzynastka?”, in Express Ilustrowany (journalism), Łódź: Oddział Prasa Łódzka, →ISSN:
Jeśli w „normalny” dzień przewrócimy się i nic sobie nie zrobimy, to powiemy, że mieliśmy ogromne szczęście. Jeśli przydarzy nam się to trzynastego, w piątek, powiemy, że spotkał nas pech.
If on a “normal” day we fall down and we don't hurt ourselves, then we say we were incredibly lucky. If this happens on Friday the 13th, then we say we were unlucky.