Wiktionary

plash

English edit

Pronunciation edit

  • IPA(key): /plæʃ/
  • Rhymes: -æʃ
    • Audio (Southern England)(file)

Etymology 1 edit

From Middle English plasch, plasche, from Old English plæsċ (“pool, puddle”), from Proto-West Germanic *plask, probably ultimately imitative.

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 edit

plash (plural plashes)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A small pool of standing water; a puddle.
    • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VIII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
      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, section 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, section XXII:
      Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, / Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank / Soil to a plash? [...]
    • a. 1678 (date written), Isaac Barrow, “(please specify the chapter name or sermon number). The Consideration of our Latter End”, in The Works of Dr. Isaac Barrow. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to VII), London: A[braham] J[ohn] Valpy, […], published 1830–1831, →OCLC:
      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.
    • 1926, T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, New York: Anchor, published 1991, page 206:
      [...] down burst torrents of thick rain and muddied us to the skin. The valley began to run in plashes of water, and Dakhil-Allah urged us across it quickly. [...]

Verb edit

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

  1. (intransitive) To splash.
  2. (transitive) To cause a splash.
  3. (transitive) To splash or sprinkle with colouring matter.
    to plash a wall in imitation of granite
Derived terms edit
Translations edit

Etymology 2 edit

From Middle English *plasshen, *plaisshen, *plesshen, from Old French plaissier, plessier (“to bend”), from Latin plectere (“to plait, weave”).

For the noun, compare Middle English plaisshes (“hedges forming an enclosure, palisade of hedges or wattles”). Compare also pleach.

Noun edit

plash (plural plashes)

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

Verb edit

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
  2. (transitive) To bend down a bough (in order to pick fruit from it).
    • 1679, John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, Second Part: Some of the trees hung over the wall, and my brother did plash and eat.

Anagrams edit

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