plash

English

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -æʃ

Etymology 1

Possibly from Middle English plashe (“puddle”), from Old English plæsc. Cognate with Dutch plas (“pool, watering hole”). Compare also the German platschen.

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? [...]

   • Isaac Barrow

     These shallow plashes.

2. A splash, or the sound made by a splash.
   • 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.
   • Keats

     plashing among bedded pebbles

   • Longfellow

     Far below him plashed the waters.

   • 1847, Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Chapter IX

     […] 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

• German: platschen (de)

Etymology 2

Old French plaissier, plessier (“to bend”). Compare 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