Other forms: splashes, splashed, splashing
A splash is what water does when something drops into it — the noise and the mess in one word. A stone into a pond, a bus through a puddle, a child jumping in at the shallow end.
The verb runs both ways: you splash water on your face in the morning, and the puddle splashes your coat as the bus goes past. A splash of something is a small amount poured in — a splash of milk in your tea, a splash of red on a grey wall. Make a splash means to arrive somewhere and be noticed, and splash out is British for spending money on something you did not need. Splashing is water thrown about in the air, so a tap that drips quietly is not splashing.
1nounsoundThe sound and the scatter of water when something hits it.~38%
“The stone hit the pond with a splash.”
synonyms: plop
2verbsplashTo throw water about, or to send it over someone or something.~58%
“The children splashed each other in the shallow end.”
Patternsplash sb / sth with water · splash about / around · a splash of + liquid · make a splash
3nounsmallA small amount of liquid poured into something.~2%
“She takes her tea with a splash of milk.”
4nounpatchA patch of bright colour on a plainer background.~2%
“One splash of yellow lifts the whole room.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 136 sentences found in the wild and placed 61 of them on a sense (75 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
SPLASH → the sound of a jump into the pool
Jump into the pool and listen: splash, and water all over the people sitting at the side.
The older word was plash, the sound of falling water. Splash is plash with an s fastened to the front — most likely caught from the company it keeps, spatter and spill, which had one already.
Probably an alteration of plash (compare spatter, spill for the initial s-).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA