Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A dabbling in water; a sound of plunging water.
  • noun A surface colored so as to look like granite. See plash, transitive verb, 2.
  • noun A mode of repairing or trimming a hedge, by bending down a part of the shoots, cutting them half through near the ground, to render them more pliable, and twisting them among the upright stems, so as to render the whole effective as a fence, and at the same time preserve all the branches alive.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The cutting or bending and intertwining the branches of small trees, as in hedges.
  • noun The dashing or sprinkling of coloring matter on the walls of buildings, to imitate granite, etc.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of plash.
  • noun A sound that plashes, as of water.
  • noun The cutting or bending and intertwining the branches of small trees, as in hedges.
  • noun The dashing or sprinkling of colouring matter on the walls of buildings, to imitate granite, etc.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Life as a manipulating man will never be the same. plashing Vole

    Aggressive or Assertive? « Awful Library Books 2010

  • When Ramsey reached the line of junipers he started searching for the waterfall, following the sound of the plashing stream through a dense tangle of undergrowth.

    The Omega Theory Mark Alpert 2011

  • That sounds like the perfect charitable act to me! plashing Vole – I take my hat off to you – that is good, fierce collecting, my friend.

    Bookaholic « Tales from the Reading Room 2010

  • I sipped, swallowed, glimpsed the peat bog plashing white legs of the kilted clan Macallan as the whisky kindled in my chest.

    'The Last Werewolf' 2011

  • The quiet may be briefly disturbed by the flapping of a bird in the trees above you, the rustle of a small creature in the undergrowth, or the gentle plashing of stream.

    Shady past 2011

  • When Ramsey reached the line of junipers he started searching for the waterfall, following the sound of the plashing stream through a dense tangle of undergrowth.

    The Omega Theory Mark Alpert 2011

  • Why could I not stop and piss on one, from which my liquids would surely drip and even be washed clean again, almost directly, by a rain shower, or even a drop of dew plashing from the bush, the tree, above?

    Zombies vs. Unicorns Justine Larbalestier 2010

  • On a mudbank a hundred yards ahead and to my right, shapes were moving - long, brown, hideously scaly dragons waddling down to the water at frightening speed, plashing into the shallows and then gliding out inexorably to head us off, their half-submerged snouts rippling the surface.

    Fiancée 2010

  • Heledd was walking without haste along the stretched wrist towards this stony knuckle, at one point plashing ankle-deep through shallow water to reach it; and there she sat down on the rock, gazing out to sea, towards the invisible and unknown coast of Ireland.

    His Disposition 2010

  • My eyes widen at the coincidence of plashing verticals and the stolid columns of the world.

    Truman Compote 2010

Comments

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  • "And it had been a source of keen pleasure to him when, below the delicate line of the violin-part, slender but robust, compact and commanding, he had suddenly become aware of the mass of the piano-part beginning to surge upward in plashing waves of sound, multiform but invisible, smooth yet restless, like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight."

    -- Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, translated by C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, p 227 of the Vintage International paperback edition

    January 13, 2008

  • Mere prose is a practical hashing;
    Poetical style is more dashing.
    A brook's voice is babble
    To the prosaic rabble -
    To the artistic ear it's plashing.

    July 3, 2014