swash
Part of speech: noun
verb
adj
Morphological type: simple
Topics: architecture
engineering
media
natural-sciences
physical-sciences
publishing
technical
typography
Etymology: Scandinavian. Compare Swedish dialect svasska, Norwegian svakka, English dialect swack (“a blow”).
Inflected forms:
form: swashes
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: swashes
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: swashing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: swashed
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: swashed
pos: verb
tags: past
form: swasher
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: swashest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
Senses:
gloss: The water that washes up on shore after an incoming wave has broken.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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.
The first process occurs when swash mixes air and sand, trapping air bubbles just below the beach surface.
The swash is made up of the remnants of a breaking wave.
gloss: 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.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: According to what you say about the shells, there ought to be a thousand flamingos feeding in this very swash at this instant.
Marks northwest junction of main and swash channels.
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).
At Cape Hatteras, numerous vessels ran aground, “driven from their anchors and grounded on the swash and bar.”
gloss: A wet splashing sound.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: As a first warning the boiling liquid lifts the cover and washes over it with a noisy swash and clatter.
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.
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 )
I listen to the soothing swash, swash of the waves and feel renewed strength in mind
gloss: A smooth stroke; a swish.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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.
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.
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.
She does not know whose hands are whose, but feels the swash and jangle of a tickle shoot up her neck.
gloss: A swishing noise.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: The swash of the whirling blades reminds me vaguely of the noise conifers make.
Nothing but more swash and click, until l heard... “Eurah!” Crunching! There it was: a definite crunching.
Swash! Swish! Swash! The wood saws chimed as they went back and forth cutting down tree branches.
gloss: A long, protruding ornamental line or pen stroke found in some typefaces and styles of calligraphy.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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; […]
There is a group of decorative swash initials, too.
so swash versions of the capitals were produced as alternatives.
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."
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.
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.
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.
gloss: A streak or patch.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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.
Hank stared for a moment at the bloody swash across his hand.
Additionally, males have an extra swash of red running parallel from the base of the bill to the eye.
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.
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.
gloss: Liquid filth; wash; hog mash.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: 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.
gloss: A blustering noise.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
gloss: swaggering behaviour.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
examples: 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.
He silently cursed the recently arrived Jessup, who was full of more swash than sense .
Not short on self-assurance, Gulbadeen opened the batting (and bowled at the death) with more swash than buckle.
gloss: A swaggering fellow; a swasher.
pos: noun
tags: countable
obsolete
uncountable
gloss: An oval figure, whose mouldings are oblique to the axis of the work.
pos: noun
tags: countable
uncountable
examples: 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.
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.
gloss: To swagger; to act with boldness or bluster (toward).
pos: verb
tags: ambitransitive
examples: He swashed out of the room, and presently we heard his angry voice berating his bearer.
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.
The men he'd swashed were coming at him, with determination if no great skill.
"We'll be splendid pirates!" cried Mrs Grinling as she swashed and buckled around the room.
I turned my back on him and swashed forward.
"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).
gloss: To dash or flow noisily; to splash.
pos: verb
tags: ambitransitive
examples: How the sea rolls swashing ‘gainst the side! Stand by for reefing, hearties!
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.
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.
The rain was pelting and rattling upon the leathern top of the carriage, and the wheels swashed as they rolled through puddle and mud.
They waved one sleeve, but only swashed wine all over the guests; they waved the other, but only scattered bones through the room.
He swashed it down with coffee royale, feeling his spirits reviving.
gloss: To swirl through liquid; to swish.
pos: verb
tags: ambitransitive
examples: The parts are swashed in the solution until they are clean and are then rinsed in cold running water.
I followed one set to the laundrey, where for two hours the samples were swashed and soaked, and swashed again, with strong laundry soap.
His gray and black hair on his head swashed in the dirty water around what used to be his face.
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.
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.
His throat worked as he poured the drink down his throat, then he took another mouthful and swashed it around before spitting it out.
gloss: To wade forcefully through liquid.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: 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.
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.
We clambered over the giant ahuehuete like Lilliputians over the body of a Gulliver, and swashed through the slimy flood.
The raccoon swashed and swished his way back out of the river's water to interrupt the mouse
In his wake swashed the others, still covered from both banks.
gloss: To swipe.
pos: verb
tags: ambitransitive
examples: '[…] ye ill-farren, useless bowdikite!' said she, as she swashed the dishclout about my lugs,
It was a fire sword That I swashed about the world, O how I swashed The great fire sword that lit the sky
Steady rhythms swash, swash, on my chest Yes, yes.
gloss: To fall violently or noisily.
pos: verb
tags: intransitive
examples: The Archbyshop of Yorke[…]swasht him down, meaning to thrust himselfe in betwixt the Legate, and the Archbyshop of Canterbury.
gloss: To streak, to color in a swash.
pos: verb
examples: As the valleys darkened, the caps of the hills were swashed in variant hues.
The glade where he stood was tropical in nature and should have been swashed in a hundred shades of green.
Great silhouettes overhead swashed the blue satin sky with scimitar wings—Magnificent Frigatebirds!
gloss: bold; dramatic.
pos: adj
examples: Very swash in camelly cashmere belted over shirt-tunic and pants in a neat, tiny print of cinnamon–navy–wine–beige crêpe de Chine;
When Sir Noel Coward played King Magnus to the Orinthia of Miss Margaret Leighton, the stage was swash with beige draperies,
It seemed like a cool thing, very swash, very buckle.
I'd only feel stupid. How could that alter anything? It's just like you: big, swash actions.
Should Angel-Feathers plume my Cap, I should Be swash? but oh! my Heart grows Cold.
gloss: Having pronounced swashes.
pos: adj
examples: The French compositor took the greek capitals for latin ones and sought out his swashest type to set the handwritten letters,
The failing to avoid at all costs when using this type of capital is that of making them too swash.
A couple of the swashest Italic capitals have gone over the top
Related words: swashbuckler
swash letter
swashplate
swash someone's buckle
swash-work
swish-swash
Derived words: swashway
Translations: