swash
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: ipa: /swɒʃ/
ipa: /swɑʃ/
rhymes: -ɒʃ
Forms: form: swashes
Etymology: Scandinavian. Compare Swedish dialect svasska, Norwegian svakka, English dialect swack (“a blow”).
Senses: examples: text: It is not the direct battering that breaks the dyke, but overtopping, when the flow of water sweeps away the inland face, so swash length is a vital thing to accommodate, and to do that you must make an estimate of the highest possible tides.
ref: 1997, Paul Shepheard, The Cultivated Wilderness, Or, What is Landscape?, page 147:
text: The first process occurs when swash mixes air and sand, trapping air bubbles just below the beach surface.
ref: 2011, Orrin H. Pilkey, William J. Neal, James Andrew Graham Cooper, The World's Beaches: A Global Guide to the Science of the Shoreline, page 141:
text: The swash is made up of the remnants of a breaking wave.
ref: 2014, Orrin H. Pilkey, Tracy Monegan Rice, William J. Neal, How to Read a North Carolina Beach:
topics: engineering
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
technical
glosses: The water that washes up on shore after an incoming wave has broken.
examples: text: According to what you say about the shells, there ought to be a thousand flamingos feeding in this very swash at this instant.
ref: 1924, Mary Mapes Dodge, St. Nicholas, page 1062:
text: Marks northwest junction of main and swash channels.
ref: 1928, United States. Bureau of Light-Houses, Atlantic Coast of the United States, page 366:
text: This is defined as a modified ridge or swash bar that develops into a berm on the swash bar's seaward margin (Coastal Research Group, 1969, p. 455).
ref: 1987, Society of Economic Paleontologists and Mineralogists, SEPM Reprint Series, page 101:
text: At Cape Hatteras, numerous vessels ran aground, “driven from their anchors and grounded on the swash and bar.”
ref: 2010, Janette Thomas Greenwood, First Fruits of Freedom, page 31:
glosses: 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.
examples: text: As a first warning the boiling liquid lifts the cover and washes over it with a noisy swash and clatter.
ref: 1906, Good Housekeeping - Volume 42, page 352:
text: The sound of the furious "swash, swash,” as it struck, carried even to the depths of the holds where the engines churned madly to keep the prow in the teeth of the waves.
ref: 1943, Ella M. Noller, Rendezvous With Victory, page 44:
text: I'd wish with a swish, or I'd wash with a swash - and I'd dash (but not clash) with a dish ( but never squish your good things )
ref: 1979, Sun & Moon - Issues 6-11, page 22:
text: I listen to the soothing swash, swash of the waves and feel renewed strength in mind
ref: 2013, Bonnie Garmon, Jim Garmon, Indian River Country : Volume 1 1880-1889:
glosses: A wet splashing sound.
examples: text: Dip in and out quickly and with a swash three or four times. This serves to wash off the dust that has settled while the fruit is on the trays.
ref: 1895, California. Legislature, Journals of the Legislature of the State of California, page 271:
text: Then he cut down a long forked stick, the anti-ophidian of the poor, and probing with the stick in one hand, began to clean the yuca grove with the machete in the other, displaying the lazy elegance of an athlete – swash, swash, swash – free and easy but looking carefully at each detail.
ref: 2005, Jimmy Weiskopf, Yajé: The New Purgatory : Encounters with Ayahuasca, page 91:
text: It had all been like a swash of pink cool-aid punch in her surprised face,some brigand of flailing emotions, in her golden pocket-book, where they could hear a fading swami-echo speaking out for animal rights, and damned yogic impulse.
ref: 2021, Carrie Chang, Sushi Girl:
text: She does not know whose hands are whose, but feels the swash and jangle of a tickle shoot up her neck.
ref: 2021, Felicia Kate Solomon, Lucia’s Poltergeist:
glosses: A smooth stroke; a swish.
examples: text: The swash of the whirling blades reminds me vaguely of the noise conifers make.
ref: 2003, Alfred Wohlpart, The Trail Home: Along the Pacific Crest, page 55:
text: Nothing but more swash and click, until l heard... “Eurah!” Crunching! There it was: a definite crunching.
ref: 2011, Barbara Allan Hite, Letters from Jane: The Adventures of an Abandoned Kitten, page 15:
text: Swash! Swish! Swash! The wood saws chimed as they went back and forth cutting down tree branches.
ref: 2019, Veronica M. E. Zuill, The Most Unforgettable Moment: Our Biggest Mistake Ever:
glosses: A swishing noise.
examples: text: Yet Svvaſh-Letters, […] ought to have the Upper Sholder of that Svvaſh Sculped dovvn ſtraight, viz. to a Right Angle, or Square vvith the Face; […]
ref: 1683, Joseph Moxon, “Numb[er] VI. Applied to the Art of Printing.”, in Mechanick Exercises: Or, The Doctrine of Handy-Works. Applied to the Art of Printing. […], volume II, London: […] Joseph Moxon […], →OCLC, § 4 (Of Graving and Sculpting the Insides of Steel Letters), page 118:
text: There is a group of decorative swash initials, too.
ref: 1955, Club of Printing Women of New York, Antique, Modern & Swash: A Brief History of Women in Printing, page 18:
text: so swash versions of the capitals were produced as alternatives.
ref: 1986, Walter Tracy, Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design, page 163:
text: Tracy also wrote that the italic was too distinctive to combine well with the roman, and that the alternative swash characters made for the italic "prettify the text only at the expense of comforatable reading."
ref: 1992, Allan Haley, Typographic Milestones, page 110:
text: GX provides a mechanism for determining if a glyph is at the start or end of a text line (so swash substitutions could be made dependent on this) while Opentype ^([sic]) does not.
ref: 2004, George Williams, “Beyond Glyphs, Advanced Typographic Features of Fonts”, in Apostolos Syropoulos, Karl Berry, Yannis Haralambous, editors, TeX, XML, and Digital Typography, page 258:
text: The grim satisfied smile on the woman's pug face suggests that she is doing this primarily to take revenge upon the absent, so conspiciously absent husband: there is a happy violence in the very swash of her signature.
ref: 2017, Joyce Carol Oates, Soul/Mate:
text: To differentiate between a swash and a flourish, note that swash is a typographical term that refers to the end of a letter that is extended in a curved flourish, and a flourish itself is just a decorative curl in general.
ref: 2020, Lisa Quine, Vintage Hand Lettering:
topics: media
publishing
typography
glosses: A long, protruding ornamental line or pen stroke found in some typefaces and styles of calligraphy.
examples: text: On impulse he took Sunset through Brentwood and saw Cape Jessamines flaring pink above green lawns and here and there a yellow swash of jonquils.
ref: 1972, John Boyd, The I. Q. Merchant, page 21:
text: Hank stared for a moment at the bloody swash across his hand.
ref: 1993, Jo-Ann Morgan, Hank and Chloe:
text: Additionally, males have an extra swash of red running parallel from the base of the bill to the eye.
ref: 2013, Sportsman's Connection, Eastern Pennsylvania All-Outdoors Atlas & Field Guide, page 43:
text: Spring had painted the land with a swash of verdant splendor, and it was difficult for Jeremy to remain in a foul mood despite the fact he was about to be ousted from his search, and his bed, by Alison Cunningham.
ref: 2014, Jill Jones, My Lady Caroline:
text: To reach the blackberries, he has to cut a path with the sickle through a swash of six-foot flowering nettles that sting his exposed wrists now and again, sweating in the sun's blaze.
ref: 2017, Adam Thorpe, Missing Fay:
glosses: A streak or patch.
examples: text: And it setteth the soul at liberty, and maketh her free to follow the will of God and doth to the soul even as health doth unto the body; after that a man is pined and wasted away with a long soaking disease, the legs cannot bear him, he cannot lift up his hands to help himself, his taste is corrupt, sugar is bitter in his mouth, his stomach abhorreth [meat.] longing after slibbersause and swash, at which a whole stomach is ready to cast his gorge.
ref: 1842, William Tyndale, The parable of the Wycked Mammon, page 10:
glosses: Liquid filth; wash; hog mash.
glosses: A blustering noise.
examples: text: Some of you are making a great swash in life and after awhile will die, leaving your families beggars, and will expect us ministers of the Gospel to come and lie about your excellencies; but we will not do it.
ref: 1886 September, “Insurance”, in The American Horticulturist: A National Journal of Horticulture, volume 2, number 1, page 27:
text: He silently cursed the recently arrived Jessup, who was full of more swash than sense .
ref: 1993, Robin Leanne Wiete, When Morning Comes, page 32:
text: Not short on self-assurance, Gulbadeen opened the batting (and bowled at the death) with more swash than buckle.
ref: 2020, Lawrence Booth, The Shorter Wisden 2020:
glosses: swaggering behaviour.
glosses: A swaggering fellow; a swasher.
examples: text: The lathe was, in process of time, adapted to the production of oval figures, twisted and swash-work, as it is called, and, lastly, of rose-engine work. The swash, or raking mouldings, were employed in the balusters of staircases and other ornaments at the period of the "Renaissance" in architecture, about the end of the sixteenth century, and, therefore, the swash-lathe assumes somewhat of the character of a manufacturing machine.
ref: 1856, Lectures on the Progress of Arts and Science, page 230:
text: The artisans of the Middle Ages were very skilful in the use of the lathe, and turned out much beautiful screen and stall work, still to be seen in our cathedrals, as well as twisted and swash-work for the balusters of staircases and other ornamental purposes.
ref: 2019, Samuel Smiles, Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers:
topics: architecture
glosses: An oval figure, whose mouldings are oblique to the axis of the work.