plash

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /plæʃ/
• Rhymes: -æʃ

  • Audio (UK)

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Etymology 1

From Middle English plasch, plasche, from Old English plæsċ (“pool, puddle”). Cognate with Dutch plas (“pool, watering hole”). Related also to West Frisian plaskje (“to splash, splatter”), Dutch plassen (“to splash, splatter”), German platschen (“to splash”).

Noun

plash (plural plashes)

1. (Britain, dialectal) A small pool of standing water; a puddle.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.viii:

     Out of the wound the red bloud flowed fresh, / That vnderneath his feet soone made a purple plesh.

   • 1597, Francis Bacon, Of the Coulers of Good and Evill, 4:

     Hereof Aesop framed the Fable of the two Frogs that consulted together in time of drowth (when many plashes that they had repayred to were dry) what was to be done.

   • 1855, Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, XXII:

     Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, / Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank / Soil to a plash? [...]

   • a. 1677, Isaac Barrow, The Consideration of our Latter End (sermon)

     These shallow plashes.

2. A splash, or the sound made by a splash.
   • 1888, Henry James, The Aspern Papers

     Presently a gondola passed along the canal with its slow rhythmical plash, and as we listened we watched it in silence.

3. A sudden downpour.

Verb

plash (third-person singular simple present plashes, present participle plashing, simple past and past participle plashed)

1. (intransitive) To splash.
   • 1818, John Keats, “Book I”, in Endymion: A Poetic Romance, London: Printed [by T. Miller] for Taylor and Hessey, […], OCLC 1467112, page 1:

     plashing among bedded pebbles

   • 1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha

     Far below him plashed the waters.

   • 1847 December, Ellis Bell [pseudonym; Emily Brontë], Wuthering Heights, volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Thomas Cautley Newby […], OCLC 156123328:

     […] heedless of my expostulations and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her […]

2. (transitive) To cause a splash.
3. (transitive) To splash or sprinkle with colouring matter.

   to plash a wall in imitation of granite

Related terms

• plashy

Translations

to splash

• Czech: šplouchat
• Dutch: pletsen (nl)

• German: platschen (de)
• Turkish: sıçramak (tr), sıçratmak (tr)

Etymology 2

From Middle English *plasshen, *plaisshen, *plesshen, from Old French plaissier, plessier (“to bend”). For the noun, compare Middle English plaisshes (“hedges forming an enclosure, palisade of hedges or wattles”). Compare also pleach.

Noun

plash (plural plashes)

1. The branch of a tree partly cut or bent, and bound to, or intertwined with, other branches.

Verb

plash (third-person singular simple present plashes, present participle plashing, simple past and past participle plashed)

1. (transitive) To cut partly, or to bend and intertwine the branches of.
   • to plash a hedge

     (Can we find and add a quotation of Evelyn to this entry?)

Anagrams

• Pahls, halps, phals