splat
Pluralsplats
Verbsplats, splatting, splatted
Pluralsplats
Formssplats, splatting, splatted
- 1The sharp, atonal sound made when a liquid or soft solid hits a solid surface.
The tomato hit the wall with a satisfying splat.
Rain fell in heavy drops, each landing with an audible splat on the tin roof.
Similarsmack, thwack, plop, slap
Note
The word imitates the noise it names, and every other messy sense on this page grows from that echo. It is usually something you hear, as in heard the splat, or something lands with a splat. Thud suggests weight and crack suggests breakage. A splat tells the listener that what hit was wet or soft and gave way on impact.
- 2The irregular, flattened shape formed when a thick liquid or soft solid hits a solid surface.
The dropped pancake batter left a wide splat on the counter.
Investigators photographed every splat of paint the vandals had thrown at the door.
Similarsplotch, blob, smear, splatter, spatter
Note
The mark left behind, rather than the noise. The sound is over in an instant, but this splat stays on the surface. It is usually named by what made it: splats of paint, a splat of batter. In talk about painting, it describes color that looks flung or dropped rather than brushed, as when a canvas is covered in seemingly careless splats.
- 3To strike a flat surface and deform into an irregular, flattened shape on impact.
Pumpkins splat dramatically when dropped from the roof of the barn.
The jellyfish splatted onto the deck of the boat.
Similarsplatter, smash, squash
Note
The intransitive verb, with the falling thing as its subject: the egg splatted onto the floor. It usually takes onto or against to name the surface. The t doubles before an ending, giving splatted and splatting. Compare the transitive verb, where someone does the splatting to something.
- 4To splatter; to throw or scatter something wet or soft so that it strikes a surface in messy drops.
Trucks splat mud onto pedestrians when they speed through puddles.
The chef splatted sauce across the plate in a deliberate zigzag.
Similarsplatter, spatter, splash, spray, fling
Note
Here someone does the splatting, and the object can be either what is flung or what is struck. You can splat sauce across a plate, or splat a roach with a shoe and flatten it on the spot. That second use is closer to swat or squash than to splatter. Context tells you whether the object was spread out or crushed.
- 5The asterisk character, *; a slang name used in computing, especially when reading commands aloud.
Add a splat after the directory name to include every file inside it.
"Run ls space splat," the instructor said, and the whole directory listing appeared.
Note
A name built for reading commands aloud, where "asterisk" is a mouthful: ls splat, splat dot txt. It is slang among programmers and command-line users, and star is the everyday alternative. Be careful in speech, because the same nickname is also used for the hash sign, #. When someone dictates a command, it is worth checking which character they mean before you type it.
- 6The hash symbol, #; a slang name used in some computing circles.
Comments in this config file begin with a splat.
He told me to press splat twice after entering the extension.
Note
One of several spoken names for #, competing with hash, pound and octothorpe. The asterisk nickname is the same word, so a spoken "splat" can mean either character. In a config file or a phone menu, the context usually settles which one is meant. In a dictated command, saying hash is safer.
- 7The Command key on an Apple Macintosh keyboard; a slang name among Mac users.
Hold splat and tab to switch between open applications.
The screenshot shortcut is splat, shift, and 4 pressed together.
Similarcommand
Note
Slang made for saying shortcuts aloud, as in splat-tab or splat-Q, among people who use Macs every day. Written instructions and help pages say Command or show the ⌘ symbol, so keep splat for conversation. Like the other character nicknames here, it borrows the echoic word behind the sound of impact.
- 8The narrow vertical wooden piece forming the center of a chair back.
The chair's splat had been carved into an elegant vase shape.
Chippendale chairs are famous for their elaborately pierced splats.
Similarbacksplat
Note
A woodworker's word with a history of its own. It comes from an earlier verb splat, "to spread flat," from Middle English splatten, "to stretch out," and has nothing to do with the echoic splat of the sound of impact. The piece is a flat board stretched up the chair back, which is the image the old verb keeps. Backsplat names the same part and avoids confusion with the messier meanings.
- 9A children's circle game of pointing and shouting "Splat!"; the slowest player to duck or respond is eliminated, and the final two settle the game with a quick-draw standoff.
A round of splat got the whole class laughing within minutes.
She won splat three times in a row at the birthday party.
- 10In playboating, a move in which the paddler stalls the kayak vertically against a rock or other solid object in the current.
His splat against the boulder drew cheers from the riverbank.
The eddy below the bridge pillar is perfect for practicing splats.
Less common meanings
- 11An operator, often written as * or ..., that marks a parameter as accepting a variable-length list of arguments.
Using a splat in the method signature lets callers pass as many arguments as they like.
The splat gathers any remaining arguments into a single array.
Note
Programmers took the operator's name from the asterisk's nickname, but the name stays even where no asterisk appears. In PHP, the splat is three dots placed before the last parameter. David Powers's PHP 7 Solutions (2019) describes it as gathering the passed values into an array for use inside the function. In conversation, people speak of the splat operator or simply a splat.
- 12An operator that takes a single scalar value and produces a vector whose elements are all initialized to that value.
A splat applied to 1.0 yields a vector of ones of the required length.
The compiler replaced the loop with a single splat instruction.
Similarbroadcast
Note
SIMD programming's informal word for broadcasting: one scalar is copied into every lane of a vector, the way Rust's [42; N] repeats 42. Broadcast is the main term, and splat is the alternative. Do not confuse it with the argument-list operator. That one gathers many values into one, while this one spreads one value across many.
- 13To combine textures in computer graphics by applying an alpha map so that lower layers show through where the map is partially or fully transparent.
Level designers splat multiple ground materials to create seamless transitions between biomes.
The engine splats a dirt texture onto the terrain wherever the path crosses the grass.
Similarblend
Note
Terrain artists use this verb for layering ground materials. A grass base gets dirt or rock splatted over it, and a blend map decides how much of each shows. The -ing form, splatting, names the technique itself and its algorithms, as in the "surface splatting algorithms" of the Vision, Modeling, and Visualization 2003 proceedings.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of splat apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origins
From an earlier "splat" meaning "to spread flat," which comes from Middle English "splatten" or "splaten" ("to stretch out, extend," and also "to split"). Compare dialectal English "splat" ("flat").
Onomatopoeic: the word imitates the sound it describes.