swash

English

Etymology

Scandinavian. Compare Swedish dialect svasska, Norwegian svakka, English dialect swack (“a blow”).

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɒʃ
• Rhymes: -æʃ

Noun

swash (countable and uncountable, plural swashes)

1. The water that washes up on shore after an incoming wave has broken
2. (typography) A long, protruding ornamental line or pen stroke found in some typefaces and styles of calligraphy.
3. A narrow sound or channel of water lying within a sand bank, or between a sand bank and the shore, or a bar over which the sea washes.
4. (obsolete) Liquid filth; wash; hog mash.
5. (obsolete) A blustering noise.
6. (obsolete) swaggering behaviour.
7. (obsolete) A swaggering fellow; a swasher.
8. (architecture) An oval figure, whose mouldings are oblique to the axis of the work.

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

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “swash”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Translations

protruding ornamental line or pen stroke found in some typefaces

• Hungarian: kacskaringó
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}

Verb

1. (intransitive) To swagger; to bluster and brag.
2. (transitive, intransitive) To dash or flow noisily; to splash.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick, chapter 40

     How the sea rolls swashing ‘gainst the side! Stand by for reefing, hearties!

3. (intransitive) To fall violently or noisily.

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

Translations

to splash

• Russian: плеска́ться (ru) impf (pleskátʹsja)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Walloon: tchapoter (wa)

See also

• swashbuckler
• swash letter

Adjective

swash (comparative more swash, superlative most swash)

1. Soft, like overripe fruit; swashy; squashy.

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

Anagrams

• shaws, shwas