splatch

English

Etymology

Probably imitative.

Noun

splatch (plural splatches)

1. A blot or splash.
   • 1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, section I:

     [I]t appear'd through the Microscope gray, like a great splatch of London dirt […]

Verb

splatch (third-person singular simple present splatches, present participle splatching, simple past and past participle splatched)

1. To mark with a splatch.
   • 1947, Kentucky State Bar Journal - Volumes 12-13, page 144:

     Stanton described Lincoln as "A long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splatched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent."

   • 1892, The Wisconsin Farmer, page 260:

     Where cows are headed up to the wall and are fed with turnips in winter, the place around them very soon gets splatched with earth off the roots;

   • 2013, John James Audubon, The Birds of America from Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories, →ISBN:

     The female lays four or five eggs, of a dull white colour, splatched with brown and black, with a very hard, smooth shell.

2. To manipulate roughly or crudely.
   • 1893, The Investors Review - Volume 2, page 391:

     Fine distinctions, however, are wasted on Sir William Harcourt. His text is, ' We are rich and growing yearly richer,' and the more broadly splatched the facts he marshals in support of his text the more striking the effect.

   • 2001, Geraldine Brooks, Year of wonders: a novel of the plague, page 180:

     Once I had the wedge in, I had to raise the heavy hammer and let it fall with all the force I could, hoping thus to splatch off large pieces of rock.

   • 2007, Albert Goldbarth -, The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007, page 48:

     ...one of the placards said a mouse and a lizard were accidentally wrapped in with a mummy, one was found that held the leg bones of a bird, and often one "whole" mummy was actually chicanerously splatched together from several dismembered corpses, grab-bag toe-bones and pottery bitlets bridging any unevenness.

3. To move in a manner that causes splashing or spreading of material.
   • 1964, Mark Howell, Journey Through a Forgotten Empire, page 166:

     We splatched down into the river and across it, getting quite wet, while I swore quietly and monotonously.

   • 1980 -, Tibor Varady, New Writing and Writers - Volume 18, →ISBN, page 99:

     ...were anyone to have seen them stumbling under the light of the newly risen moon they would have found little splendour in the appearance of either, but Big Hugh was without doubt the most trampish and tousled of the pair with his long scruffy overcoat muddy and besmirched with filth and sickness, his hair splatched across his chalky face and his eyelids hovering endlessly on an eerie borderline between waking and sleeping.

   • 2016, James Treadwell, Arcadia: A Novel, →ISBN, page 327:

     He tries to creep along carefully but he can't help splatching on the floor.