different between wash vs plash

English

Etymology

From Middle English washen, waschen, weschen, from Old English wascan, from Proto-Germanic *waskan?, *watskan? (“to wash, get wet”), from Proto-Indo-European *wed- (“wet; water”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian waaske (“to wash”), West Frisian waskje (“to wash”), Dutch wassen, wasschen (“to wash”), Low German waschen (“to wash”), German waschen (“to wash”), Danish vaske (“to wash”), Norwegian Bokmål vaske (“to wash”), Swedish vaska (“to wash”), Icelandic vaska (“to wash”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /w??/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /w??/, /w??/
• (Canada, NYC, cot–caught merger) IPA^(key): /w??/
• (US, intrusive r) IPA^(key): /w???/
• Rhymes: -??
• Rhymes: -??(?)?

Verb

wash (third-person singular simple present washes, present participle washing, simple past and past participle washed)

1. To clean with water.
   • 1917, Lester Angell Round, Harold Locke Lang, Preservation of vegetables by fermentation and salting, page 9

     Wash the vegetables, drain off the surplus water, and pack them in a keg, crock, or other utensil until it is nearly full

   • 1971, Homemaking Handbook: For Village Workers in Many Countries, page 101

     If using celery or okra, wash the vegetables in safe water.

   • 2010, Catherine Abbott, The Everything Grow Your Own Vegetables Book: Your Complete Guide to planting, tending, and harvesting vegetables, Everything Books ?ISBN, page 215

     Wash the vegetables thoroughly; even a little dirt can contain bacteria. Wash vegetables individually under running water.

2. (transitive) To move or erode by the force of water in motion.

3. (mining) To separate valuable material (such as gold) from worthless material by the action of flowing water.
4. (intransitive) To clean oneself with water.

5. (transitive) To cover with water or any liquid; to wet; to fall on and moisten.
   • [the landscape] washed with a cold, grey mist

6. (intransitive) To move with a lapping or swashing sound; to lap or splash.

7. (intransitive) To be eroded or carried away by the action of water.
8. (intransitive, figuratively) To be cogent, convincing; to withstand critique.
   • 2012, The Economist, Oct 13th 2012 issue, The Jordan and its king: As beleaguered as ever

     The king is running out of ideas as well as cash. His favourite shock-absorbing tactic—to blame his governments and sack his prime ministers—hardly washes.

9. (intransitive) To bear without injury the operation of being washed.

10. (intransitive) To be wasted or worn away by the action of water, as by a running or overflowing stream, or by the dashing of the sea; said of road, a beach, etc.
11. To cover with a thin or watery coat of colour; to tint lightly and thinly.
12. To overlay with a thin coat of metal.

13. (transitive) To cause dephosphorization of (molten pig iron) by adding substances containing iron oxide, and sometimes manganese oxide.
14. (transitive) To pass (a gas or gaseous mixture) through or over a liquid for the purpose of purifying it, especially by removing soluble constituents.

Usage notes

In older works and possibly still in some dialects, wesh and woosh may be found as past tense forms. Washen may be found as a past participle.

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

wash (plural washes)

1. The process or an instance of washing or being washed by water or other liquid.

2. A liquid used for washing.
3. A lotion or other liquid with medicinal or hygienic properties.

4. The quantity of clothes washed at a time.

5. (art) A smooth and translucent painting created using a paintbrush holding a large amount of solvent and a small amount of paint.
6. The sound of breaking of the seas, e.g., on the shore.
   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 16, [1]

     […] the wind in the cordage and the wash of the sea helped the more to put them beyond earshot […]

7. The bow wave, wake, or vortex of an object moving in a fluid, in particular:
   1. The bow wave or wake of a moving ship, or the vortex from its screws.
      • 2003, Guidelines for Managing Wake Wash from High-speed Vessels: Report of Working Group 41 of the Maritime Navigation Commission, PIANC ?ISBN, page 5

        To date, much of the research undertaken on high-speed vessel wake wash has appeared only as unpublished reports for various authorities and management agencies.

   2. The turbulence left in the air by a moving airplane.
   3. The backward current or disturbed water caused by the action of oars, or of a steamer's screw or paddles, etc.
8. (nautical) The blade of an oar.
9. Ground washed away to the sea or a river.

   • The wash of pastures, fields, commons, and roads, […] where rain water hath a long time settled.

10. A piece of ground washed by the action of water, or sometimes covered and sometimes left dry; the shallowest part of a river, or arm of the sea; also, a bog; a marsh.
11. A shallow body of water.
13. In arid and semi-arid regions, the normally dry bed of an intermittent or ephemeral stream; an arroyo or wadi.
    • 1997, Stanley Desmond Smith, et al. Physiological Ecology of North American Desert Plants, Nature

      In some desert-wash systems (which have been termed “xero-riparian”)

    • 1999, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert

      ...though the wash may carry surface water for only a few hours a year.
14. A situation in which losses and gains or advantages and disadvantages are equivalent; a situation in which there is no net change.
15. (finance, slang) A fictitious kind of sale of stock or other securities between parties of one interest, or by a broker who is both buyer and seller, and who minds his own interest rather than that of his clients.
16. Waste liquid, the refuse of food, the collection from washed dishes, etc., from a kitchen, often used as food for pigs; pigwash.
17. In distilling, the fermented wort before the spirit is extracted.
18. A mixture of dunder, molasses, water, and scummings, used in the West Indies for distillation.
    • 1793, Bryan Edwards, History, Civil and Commercial, of the British Colonies in the West Indies

      In order to augment the vinosity of the wash, many substances are recommended by Dr. Shaw, such as tartar, nitre, common salt, and the vegetable or mineral acids.

19. A thin coat of paint or metal laid on anything for beauty or preservation.
20. Ten strikes, or bushels, of oysters.
21. (architecture) The upper surface of a member or material when given a slope to shed water; hence, a structure or receptacle shaped so as to receive and carry off water.

22. (television) A lighting effect that fills a scene with a chosen colour.
23. (stagecraft) A lighting fixture that can cast a wide beam of light to evenly fill an area with light, as opposed to a spotlight.

Synonyms

• lavatory

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene)

Anagrams

• Haws, Shaw, Wahs, haws, shaw, shwa, wahs

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /plæ?/
• Rhymes: -æ?

Etymology 1

From Middle English plasch, plasche, from Old English plæs? (“pool, puddle”). Cognate with Dutch plas (“pool, watering hole”). Related also to West Frisian plaskje (“to splash, splatter”), Dutch plassen (“to splash, splatter”), German platschen (“to splash”).

Noun

plash (plural plashes)

1. (Britain, dialectal) A small pool of standing water; a puddle.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, II.viii:

     Out of the wound the red bloud flowed fresh, / That vnderneath his feet soone made a purple plesh.

   • 1597, Francis Bacon, Of the Coulers of Good and Evill, 4:

     Hereof Aesop framed the Fable of the two Frogs that consulted together in time of drowth (when many plashes that they had repayred to were dry) what was to be done.

   • 1855, Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, XXII:

     Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, / Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank / Soil to a plash? [...]

   • a. 1677, Isaac Barrow, The Consideration of our Latter End (sermon)

     These shallow plashes.

2. A splash, or the sound made by a splash.
   • 1888, Henry James, The Aspern Papers

     Presently a gondola passed along the canal with its slow rhythmical plash, and as we listened we watched it in silence.

3. A sudden downpour.

Verb

plash (third-person singular simple present plashes, present participle plashing, simple past and past participle plashed)

1. (intransitive) To splash.

   • plashing among bedded pebbles

   • 1855, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha

     Far below him plashed the waters.

   • […] heedless of my expostulations and the growling thunder, and the great drops that began to plash around her […]

2. (transitive) To cause a splash.
3. (transitive) To splash or sprinkle with colouring matter.

   to plash a wall in imitation of granite

Related terms

• plashy

Translations

Etymology 2

From Middle English *plasshen, *plaisshen, *plesshen, from Old French plaissier, plessier (“to bend”). For the noun, compare Middle English plaisshes (“hedges forming an enclosure, palisade of hedges or wattles”). Compare also pleach.

Noun

plash (plural plashes)

1. The branch of a tree partly cut or bent, and bound to, or intertwined with, other branches.

Verb

plash (third-person singular simple present plashes, present participle plashing, simple past and past participle plashed)

1. (transitive) To cut partly, or to bend and intertwine the branches of.
2. (transitive) To bend down a bough (in order to pick fruit from it).
   • {{1679, John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress, Second Part: Some of the trees hung over the wall, and my brother did plash and eat.

Anagrams

• Pahls, halps, phals