Word.ws English Dictionary

splain

splain verb: apheretic form of explain.

Verb (1)

splain (third-person singular simple present splains, present participle splaining, simple past and past participle splained)

  1. (dialectal, informal) Apheretic form of explain.
    • "Howsomever, dey 'ranged der 'fairs, en splained der bizness."1881, Joel Chandler Harris, Uncle Remus
    • "Why, Lor' bless you, I never knew nothing about the rights of them things till you splained them to me yesterday, boss."1905, R. F. Foster, “In Self Defence”, in The Bookman, volume 21

Verb (2)

splain (third-person singular simple present splains, present participle splaining, simple past and past participle splained)

  1. (slang) To condescendingly explain something, often extensively, especially to someone that knows more about it; for example, to mansplain, whitesplain, etc.
    • Those who splain may have the intent of helping the situation, but the actual impact of their actions can feel condescending or insulting.2019, Jennifer Brown, How to Be an Inclusive Leader: Creating Trust, Cooperation, and Community across Differences, Berrett-Koehler, →ISBN, page 35

Forms of splain

third-person singular presentsplains
present participlesplaining
past participlesplained
pastsplained
alternative form'splain

Origin of splain

Apheretic form of explain.

Partly from the preceding sense, partly from -splain (after mansplaining).

Questions about splain

What does splain mean?
Splain means apheretic form of explain.
What part of speech is splain?
Splain is a verb.
What is the past tense of splain?
The past tense of splain is splained.

Words near splain in the dictionary

  1. splachnaceous
  2. splachnocranium
  3. splachnoid
  4. splade
  5. splades
  6. splain
  7. splained
  8. splaining
  9. splainings
  10. splains
  11. splake

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: splain (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-splain.ogg.

Cite this entry: “splain.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/splain. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.