swash
Language: English
Part of speech: verb
Pronunciation: ipa: /swɒʃ/
ipa: /swɑʃ/
rhymes: -ɒʃ
Forms: form: swashes
form: swashing
form: swashed
form: swashed
Etymology: Scandinavian. Compare Swedish dialect svasska, Norwegian svakka, English dialect swack (“a blow”).
Senses: examples: text: He swashed out of the room, and presently we heard his angry voice berating his bearer.
ref: 1910, Jerome Klapka Jerome, Robert Barr, Arthur Lawrence, The Idler: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine - Volume 37, page 1327:
text: He swashed about (cautioned though he was to maintain silence concerning his past theatrical relationships) in such a self-confident manner that he was like to convince every one of his identity by mere matter of circumstantial evidence.
ref: 2009, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie: A Novel, page 310:
text: The men he'd swashed were coming at him, with determination if no great skill.
ref: 2011, Harry Turtledove, An Emperor for the Legion:
text: "We'll be splendid pirates!" cried Mrs Grinling as she swashed and buckled around the room.
ref: 2016, Ronda Armitage, The Lighthouse Keeper: The Lighthouse Keeper's Breakfast:
text: I turned my back on him and swashed forward.
ref: 2019, Mark David Gerson, The MoonQuest:
text: "In its nature," says Jacques Lacan just a few years after the physical-mathematical techniques had joined forces with cybernetics and then swashed back to France, “the door belongs to the symbolic order, [as] it opens up either on to the real or the imaginary, we don't know quite which [...] [it is] the symbol par excellence" (Lacan 1988, 302).
ref: 2021, Gabriele Dürbeck, Philip Hüpkes, Narratives of Scale in the Anthropocene:
glosses: To swagger; to act with boldness or bluster (toward).
examples: text: How the sea rolls swashing ‘gainst the side! Stand by for reefing, hearties!
ref: 1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Moby Dick’’, chapter 40”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC:
text: There was an inch or two of water on the floor in our room that continually swashed, swashed from side to side, with the rolling of the ship.
ref: 1915, Emma Beatrice Burton, Beatrice Witherspoon, page 59:
text: Standing at the rail of his caravel on a sultry Caribbean evening as the water jogged and swashed the boat, he smelled the perfume of soil and flowers wafting on a land breeze from the island of Cuba.
ref: 2009, Callum Roberts, The Unnatural History of the Sea:
text: The rain was pelting and rattling upon the leathern top of the carriage, and the wheels swashed as they rolled through puddle and mud.
ref: 2014, M. M. Owen, A Sting In The Tale - An Anthology of Twist Endings:
text: They waved one sleeve, but only swashed wine all over the guests; they waved the other, but only scattered bones through the room.
ref: 2014, Sheldon Cashdan, The Witch Must Die: The Hidden Meaning of Fairy Tales:
text: He swashed it down with coffee royale, feeling his spirits reviving.
ref: 2015, Steven Blair Wheeler, Behind Enemy Lines: A Novel of the Battle of the Bulge:
glosses: To dash or flow noisily; to splash.
examples: text: The parts are swashed in the solution until they are clean and are then rinsed in cold running water.
ref: 1917, The Automobile - Volume 37, page 233:
text: I followed one set to the laundrey, where for two hours the samples were swashed and soaked, and swashed again, with strong laundry soap.
ref: 1920, Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine - Volume 99:
text: His gray and black hair on his head swashed in the dirty water around what used to be his face.
ref: 2008, Francisco Chicado, Mandible Museum, page 76:
text: First, they should be taken into the mouth, swashed and swirled around in the mouth so as to mix them with your saliva in which the saliva enzymes break down the juice for a much easier consumption.
ref: 2012, Sir Leonard, My Dual Fresh Juice and Miracle Weight Losing Plans:
text: He swashed the dipper around the bucket, keeping his eyes down—and took a slow step sidewise until he cleared the well box and stood behind it.
ref: 2014, Ernest Haycox, Man in the Saddle:
text: His throat worked as he poured the drink down his throat, then he took another mouthful and swashed it around before spitting it out.
ref: 2019, Matthew Hughes, A God in Chains:
glosses: To swirl through liquid; to swish.
examples: text: Kala Nag swashed out of the water, blew his trunk clear, and began another climb; but this time he was not alone, and he had not to make his path.
ref: 1894, Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book:
text: While Col-d'Argent sank collapsed upon the Bridge, and the horse charged over him, and again charged, and beat and were beaten three several times, Anhalt-Dessau, impatient of such fiddling hither and thither, swashed into the stream itself with his Prussian Foot; swashed through it, waist-deep or breast-deep, and might have settled the matter had not his cartridges got wetted.
ref: 1899, Thomas Carlyle, History of Fredrich the Second, called Frederick the Great, page 323:
text: We clambered over the giant ahuehuete like Lilliputians over the body of a Gulliver, and swashed through the slimy flood.
ref: 1927, Carleton Beals, Brimstone and Chili, page 137:
text: The raccoon swashed and swished his way back out of the river's water to interrupt the mouse
ref: 2019, Ken Donaldson, Mouses Journey, page 112:
text: In his wake swashed the others, still covered from both banks.
ref: 2021, Arthur Olney Friel, Tiger River:
glosses: To wade forcefully through liquid.
examples: text: '[…] ye ill-farren, useless bowdikite!' said she, as she swashed the dishclout about my lugs,
ref: 1828, The night watch; or, Tales of the sea - Volume 2, page 97:
text: It was a fire sword That I swashed about the world, O how I swashed The great fire sword that lit the sky
ref: 2010, Dorothea Lasky, Black Life, page 10:
text: Steady rhythms swash, swash, on my chest Yes, yes.
ref: 2015, James Hannah, The A to Z of You and Me, page 191:
glosses: To swipe.
examples: text: The Archbyshop of Yorke[…]swasht him down, meaning to thrust himselfe in betwixt the Legate, and the Archbyshop of Canterbury.
ref: 1577, Raphaell Holinshed, The Laste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande […], volume II, London: […] for Iohn Hunne, →OCLC, page 444, column 2:
glosses: To fall violently or noisily.
examples: text: As the valleys darkened, the caps of the hills were swashed in variant hues.
ref: 2003, Walter Schenck, Shiloh, Unveiled, page 660:
text: The glade where he stood was tropical in nature and should have been swashed in a hundred shades of green.
ref: 2014, Jill Jones, A Scent of Magic:
text: Great silhouettes overhead swashed the blue satin sky with scimitar wings—Magnificent Frigatebirds!
ref: 2019, Nancy Corson Carter, A Green Bough: Poems For Renewal, page 6:
glosses: To streak, to color in a swash.
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swashplate
swash someone's buckle
swash-work
swish-swash