v. dial. [? onomatopœic; cf. FLUSH v.2]
1. To splash. trans. and intr.
1567. J. Maplet, A Greene Forest, or a Naturall Historie, 21. I haue seene it my selfe when as this kinde of Mettall being molten in the pit and but a sponefull of water being cast into, it hath floushed and leapt vp to the top of the house.
1838. Holloway, Dict. Provinc., Floush.… To plash and beat water about with violence, as boys frequently do when bathing.
1885. N. & Q., 26 Sept. Ser. VI. XII. 249/1. Flouse or Flowse, verb active and neuter, to splash water as in a bath; or to splash a bathing companion with water.
2. intr. To come with a heavy splash.
1863. Kingsley, Water-bab., 95. But as Tom chased them, he came close to a great dark hover under an alder-root, and out floushed a huge old brown trout, ten times as big as he was, and ran right against him, and knocked all the breath out of his body; and I don’t know which was the more frightened of the two.
3. The verb stem used adverbially.
1819. T. Moore, Tom Crib’s Mem. (ed. 3), 13.
| Both peel’d—but, on laying his Dandy-belt by, | |
| Old GEORGY went floush, and his backers look’d shy. |
Hence Flousing ppl. a.
1880. Jefferies, Greene Ferne Farm, iii. 64. Ever round and round, without haste and without rest, went the massive wheel in the mill—ceaseless as the revolving firmament—to the clack of the noisy hopper and creak of the iron gudgeons, and the flousing splash of the mill-race.
