splatch

plural splatches

1. A blot or splash.

   [I]t appear'd through the Microscope gray, like a great splatch of London dirt […]

   1665, Robert Hooke, Micrographia, section I

present singular third person splatches · participle present splatching · participle past splatched · past splatched

1. To mark with a splatch.

   The female lays four or five eggs, of a dull white colour, splatched with brown and black, with a very hard, smooth shell.

   2013, John James Audubon, The Birds of America from Drawings Made in the United States and Their Territories, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Stanton described Lincoln as "A long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splatched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent."

   1947, Kentucky State Bar Journal - Volumes 12-13, page 144

   Where cows are headed up to the wall and are fed with turnips in winter, the place around them very soon gets splatched with earth off the roots;

   1892, The Wisconsin Farmer, page 260

2. To manipulate roughly or crudely.

   Once I had the wedge in, I had to raise the heavy hammer and let it fall with all the force I could, hoping thus to splatch off large pieces of rock.

   2001, Geraldine Brooks, Year of wonders: a novel of the plague, page 180

   2 more examples

   Fine distinctions, however, are wasted on Sir William Harcourt. His text is, ' We are rich and growing yearly richer,' and the more broadly splatched the facts he marshals in support of his text the more striking the effect.

   1893, The Investors Review - Volume 2, page 391

   ...one of the placards said a mouse and a lizard were accidentally wrapped in with a mummy, one was found that held the leg bones of a bird, and often one "whole" mummy was actually chicanerously splatched together from several dismembered corpses, grab-bag toe-bones and pottery bitlets bridging any unevenness.

   2007, Albert Goldbarth -, The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007, page 48

3. To move in a manner that causes splashing or spreading of material.

   He tries to creep along carefully but he can't help splatching on the floor.

   2016, James Treadwell, Arcadia: A Novel, →ISBN, page 327

   2 more examples

   We splatched down into the river and across it, getting quite wet, while I swore quietly and monotonously.

   1964, Mark Howell, Journey Through a Forgotten Empire, page 166

   ...were anyone to have seen them stumbling under the light of the newly risen moon they would have found little splendour in the appearance of either, but Big Hugh was without doubt the most trampish and tousled of the pair with his long scruffy overcoat muddy and besmirched with filth and sickness, his hair splatched across his chalky face and his eyelids hovering endlessly on an eerie borderline between waking and sleeping.

   1980 -, Tibor Varady, New Writing and Writers - Volume 18, →ISBN, page 99