Other forms: clashes
A clash is a violent meeting, or a jarring difference. Clashes with police, a clash of colours, a diary clash.
It runs from street violence to two meetings booked at once, and the shared idea is two things meeting where they should not. A clash of colours is a judgement about taste. The word imitates the sound of two hard things striking.
1nounclashA violent meeting, or a jarring difference.
“There were violent clashes between police and protesters outside the parliament.”
clash is a collision.
Imitative of the sound of a collision, recorded from the sixteenth century.
Of imitative of the sound origin. Compare stq klatskje (“to smack, slap”), West Frisian kletse, kletskje, Dutch kletsen (“to smack, slap, clash”), German Low German klattsen, klatsken (“to smack, splash”), German klatschen (“to clap, smack, slap”) and Klatsch (“a clapping sound; the din resulting from two or more things colliding”), Danish klaske (“to clash, splatter”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA