Chiefly dial. and U.S. [Imitative.]
1. intr. To splash continuously or noisily: a. Of persons, etc., in water or mud.
1784–5. Ann. Reg., 324/2. We … were, God knows how, but as merry as grigs, to think how we should splatter in the water.
1826. J. Wilson, Noct. Ambr., Wks. 1855, I. 239. How engagingly delicate the virgin splattering along, whip in mouth, draggle-tailed, and with left leg bared to the knee-pan!
1854. Miss Baker, Northampt. Gloss., Splattering, splashing about in water so as to make a noise.
1896. Crockett, Grey Man, xii. 85. A good many Craufords were already splattering like wounded waterfowl in the moss.
b. Of water or other liquid.
1884. Kendal Mercury & Times, 26 Sept., 2/6. The water comes gurgling, then splattering down betwixt great masses of rock.
1897. Outing, XXX. 381/1. To one side a stream tumbled over it the whole ten feet, and splattered into a little pool below.
2. trans. To spatter or sputter (something); to cause to spatter.
1785. Burns, To W. Simpson, Postscr. xiii. Tho’ dull prose-folk latin splatter In logic tulzie.
1831. Blackw. Mag., XXIX. 708. Baser Helot still who ate up that loathsome lie, and splattered it out again!
1897. J. B. Carrington, in Outing, XXX. 132/2. It was a grateful summer shower that splattered the dust on the road.
3. To bespatter or splash with something.
1888. in Berkshire Gloss., 152.
1894. R. H. Davis, Eng. Cousins, 83. Their wives splattered with the mud of the Mile-End Road.
4. Comb. in splatter-work (see quot.).
1897. Singer & Strang, Etching, Engraving, etc. 124. Splatter work, very customary in poster designing and other large lithographic pictures, is made by filling a short bristle brush with lithographic ink, and drawing a knife or other edge across.
Hence Splattered ppl. a.
1805. A. Wilson, Poems & Lit. Prose (1876), II. 145. Through this deep swamp in splattered plight … we laboured on.
1882. Philadelphia Even. Star, 2 May. There is a masculine run upon fancifully splattered shirtings.
