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.

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

   • 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.

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

Translations

to splash

• Czech: šplouchat
• Dutch: pletsen

• German: platschen (de)

Related terms

• plashy

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, phals