splatterdashes

Noun

splatterdash (plural splatterdashes)

1. An uproar.
   • Spluttersmash and splatterdash! In the shallow pools they splash, Like two wrestlers closing! Long they fight and twist and turn, But the race is over1892, Robert Williams Buchanan, The Buchanan Ballads, Old and New, page 87
2. A work (of art, literature, etc.) that gives the appearance of having been created in a haphazard, chaotic manner.
   • We landed and again possessed the isle in force[…]We found there was yet dispute of our ascendancy, five great canoes coming bow out[…]No soft garments now, not yet mere nakedness, but a splatterdash of color beyond any rainbow that ever was[…]"What is that?" queried a maiden huskily. "As I live...1892, W. H. Babcock, chapter 12, in The Brides of the Tiger, pages 162–163
3. A spangle; a sparkly decoration.
   • When a member of the Governor's Footguards of Connecticut was parading with the company, his son stood at the gate with his mother, and as they flashed by in their splatterdash finery, he said: "Oh, ma, ain't they grand; and see, everybody is out of step but father."1928, James Schermerhorn, Schermerhorn's Stories, page 155
4. (plural-normally) Spatterdashes.
   • He wore a black coat, rather worn than old, which hung in tatters, a very fine but dirty shirt, frayed ruffles; a pair of splatterdashes so large that he could have put both legs into either of them, and, to secure himself from the snow, a little hat, only fit to be carried under his arm.1769, Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau
5. A warrior.
   • They also painted their faces, and, according to Wood, imprinted figures with a searing iron upon their bodies; perhaps, as he suggests, "to blazon their antique Gentilitie," for, he says, "a sagamore with a Humberd in his eare for a pendant, a black hawke on his occiput for his plume, Mowhackees...1892, James P. Baxter, “The Abnakis and Their Ethnic Relations”, in Collections and Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society, page 27

See all 8 meanings of splatterdash