Dictionary

splat en · NOUN · etymology 1

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio
• /splæt/

Etymology

From earlier splat (“to spread flat”), from Middle English splatten, splaten (“to stretch out, extend", also "to split”). Compare dialectal English splat (“flat”).

Meanings

1. The narrow wooden centre piece of a chair back.

Forms

Synonyms

backsplat

splat en · NOUN · etymology 2

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio
• /splæt/

Etymology

Onomatopoeic.

Meanings

1. The sharp, atonal sound of a liquid or soft solid hitting a solid surface.
   • So when it come to choices, I prefer the cricket bat. It doesn't mark the skin and gives a better sounding "splat". 1994, Mike Hayes, Tell Us Anothree! More yarns from all around Australia, Sydney: The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, published 2001, page 32:
   • I didn't see the egg fall, but I heard the splat when it hit the floor.
2. The irregular shape of a viscous liquid or soft solid which has hit a solid surface.
   • The canvas was covered by seemingly careless splats of paint.
3. (slang) The Command key on an Apple Macintosh.
4. (slang) Any of various characters appearing in computer character sets. ▸ The asterisk *
5. (slang) Any of various characters appearing in computer character sets. ▸ The hash symbol #
6. An operator indicating a variable-length argument list, often denoted by * or ....
   • It consists of three dots or periods preceding the last (or only) parameter in the function signature. The splat operator converts the values passed to the function into an array, which can then be used inside the function […] 2019, David Powers, PHP 7 Solutions: Dynamic Web Design Made Easy, page 64:
7. An operator which takes a scalar value and creates a vector in which each element is initialized to that value.
   • For example, "broadcast" (sometimes called "splat") makes a vector whose lanes are all the same scalar, like Rust's [42; N] array literal. [2023 November 27, Designing a SIMD Algorithm from Scratch, “Designing a SIMD Algorithm from Scratch”, in mcyoung, archived from the original on 16 Feb 2025:
8. A move in playboating involving stalling in place while positioned vertically against a solid object in the water.
9. A children's game in which one person, in the centre of a circle of players, points and says "SPLAT!" at another player. That player then ducks down and the two players either side of them point and say "SPLAT!". The slowest to react is and eliminated from the game. The final is settled by a Mexican standoff.
10. (abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Gaussian splat
    alt of Gaussian splat

Forms

splat en · VERB · etymology 2

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio
• /splæt/

Etymology

Onomatopoeic.

Meanings

1. (intransitive) To hit a flat surface and deform into an irregular shape.
   • The egg splatted onto the floor.
2. (transitive) To splatter.
   • She splatted the roach with her shoe.
3. (transitive) To combine different textures by applying an alpha channel map to the higher levels, revealing the layers underneath where the map is partially or completely transparent.
   • Figure 6: Checkerboard rendering using two different screen space surface splatting algorithms. 2003, Thomas Ertl, Vision, Modeling, and Visualization 2003: Proceedings, page 491:

Forms

Deriveds

splatty · Splat Pack · dicksplat · kersplat · splatfest · spleef

Relateds

sploop · splatter · splat map · splatbook · splash · splat mat · sploosh · plop