Forms: 5 flasche, 5–6 flassh(e, 9 dial. flass, 7– flash. [Of onomatopœic origin; cf. the synonyms flosche (FLOSH), FLASK sb.2 (which are earlier recorded), PLASH (= MDu. plasch), which seem to imitate the sound of ‘splashing’ in a puddle. The synonymous F. flache may have influenced the Eng. word; it is commonly regarded as a subst. use of flache, fem. of OF. flac adj. soft:—L. flaccus.]
1. A pool, a marshy place. Obs. exc. local.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 403. Plasche, or flasche, where reyne water stondythe … torrens, lacuna.
1523. Fitzherbert, The Boke of Husbandry, § 70. There is some maner of grasse that a horse wyll eate, and the beast wyl not eate, as the fytches, flasshes, and lowe places, and all the holowe bunnes and pypes that growe therin.
1622. Drayton, Poly-olb., xxv. 60.
| Where they [birds] from Flash to Flash, like the full Epicure | |
| Waft, as they lou’d to change their Diet euery meale. |
c. 1746. J. Collier (Tim Bobbin), Lanc. Dialect, Gloss., Flash, a lake.
1826. H. N. Coleridge, West Indies, 280. The Lagoon is a magnificent piece of brackish water seven miles square and communicating on the north west by a long flash, as they call it, or river with a large bay, which again is separated from the outer sea by a black reef of rocks, over the top of which the breakers rush and dash in a tempest of foam.
1867. Smyth, Sailor’s Word-bk., Flash … Also, a pool, Also, in the west, a river with a large bay, which is again separated from the outer sea by a reef of rocks.
1870. E. Peacock, Ralf Skirl., II. 111. Hev’ ye forgotten? I remember it as thof it was nobut yesterday, an’ it ’ll be ayther six or seven an’ twenty year sin’ come time, when we was a duckin’ in Ferry Flash.
attrib. 1882. Lanc. Gloss., Flash-pit, a pit nearly grown up with reeds and grass.
2. [Cf. F. flache place where a paving-stone has sunk.] (See quot.)
1888. Gresley, Gloss. Coal Mining, Flash (Cheshire), a subsidence of the surface due to the working of rock salt and pumping of brine.
