to throw a substance so it scatters as it lands: to dash liquid against something, or fling dust, ashes, or seed through the air
This verb describes one clear physical motion: taking something loose, a liquid or a fine solid, and flinging it so that it spreads out and settles where it lands. It is not a careful, drop-by-drop sprinkle done with a fingertip, and it is not a wide broadcast that disperses something far and gone. It is a single tossing throw whose point is to cover a surface or fill the air.
The two shades below are the same action applied to different materials. When the thing thrown is blood or water, English usually reaches for dash or sprinkle: the priest slings blood from a basin against the sides of the altar. When the thing thrown is dry, English reaches for scatter, throw, or strew: soot flung toward the sky, dust cast on a mourner's head, live coals hurled over a city, seed broadcast across a field. The word itself does not change; only what is in the hand does.
Because the ritual use dominates the corpus, this verb became almost a technical term for the covenant act of putting sacrificial blood on the altar. That heavy religious weight sits on top of an ordinary, everyday motion that any farmer or grieving neighbor would recognize.