pleached, ppl. a.
(pliːtʃt, poet. ˈpliːtʃɪd)
[f. pleach v. + -ed1.]
1. Of boughs: Interlaced, intertwined, tangled; transf. of the arms, folded together.
| 1606 Shakes. Ant. & Cl. iv. xiv. 73 Would'st thou..see Thy Master thus with pleacht Armes, bending downe His corrigible necke? 1896 Field 1 Dec. 828/2 The pleached laurels near the house. 1897 M. Kingsley W. Africa 280 It was hedged with thickly pleached bushes. |
2. Formed by the pleaching or intertwisting of boughs and twigs; fenced, bordered, or overarched with pleached boughs, as a garden-alley or arbour. Now chiefly as a Shaksperian expression revived by Scott.
| 1599 Shakes. Much Ado i. ii. 10 The Prince and Count Claudio walking in a thick pleached alley in my orchard. Ibid. iii. i. 7 Bid her steale into the pleached bower, Where hony-suckles ripened by the sunne, Forbid the sunne to enter. 1822 Scott Nigel x, He..proposed..that they should take a turn in the pleached alley. 1829 Anniversary, Beatrice 232 She couches in the pleached bower Which tasselling honeysuckles deck. 1861 G. J. Whyte-Melville Tilbury Nogo 240 An occasional grass field, enclosed by high rotten banks and ‘pleached’ fences. |