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squash

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English has two main words spelled squash: the verb "to crush", with its nouns (the drink, the game), from French, and the name of the vegetable, from an Algonquian language.[1][2][3]

Pronunciation

  • UK: /skwɒʃ/[4]
  • US: /skwɔʃ/, /skwɔɹʃ/[4]

squash1 crush; the drink and the game

Etymology

The verb meaning to crush is inherited from Middle English squachen,[5][1][2] borrowed from Old French esquacher, a variant of esquasser and escachier (“to crush, shatter, destroy, break”),[5][2][6] from Vulgar Latin *exquassō,[1][2][7][8] formed from ex- (“out”) and quassō (“to shatter”),[1][2] the frequentative of quatiō (“to shake”),[7][8] from Proto-Indo-European *kwēt- (“to shake”).[7] The Anglo-Norman verb esquasser, recorded from the third quarter of the 12th century, already meant to shatter, crush, squash and wipe out.[9] The same Latin source gave quash,[1][2][8] and the English word may have been partly conformed to it;[2][10][11] the Shorter Oxford calls squash an expressive alteration of quash,[12] and the OED thinks some senses may be partly or mainly imitative.[6][2] Wiktionary traces esquacher instead to *excoāctiō, with esquasser only influencing it.[4]

Earliest recorded meaning

Barnhart dates squachen to before 1325, meaning to annul, to shoot, to destroy or crush;[1] the Middle English Dictionary's first quotation, of about 1390, has to smash or crush (a tower), and it also records the senses to annul a writ and to shoot a crossbow bolt.[5] The OED dates "to squeeze or crush into a flat mass" from 1565.[6][3]

Semantic evolution

The noun first named something soft and unripe: in 1590 Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream has squash for an unripe pea pod,[1][3][6] and Johnson (1755) quoted Twelfth Night for anything soft and easily crushed.[13] From 1611 the noun meant the act or sound of squashing,[6][2] and, from 1654, the impact of a soft heavy body falling.[6] The verb was used from about 1777 for suppressing or putting down,[6] and, from 1858, for being flattened on impact.[6] The sense "something crushed" gave the drink, as in lemon squash, recorded in 1888;[1][2] Collins labels the fruit drink British.[14] The game took its name from the soft rubber ball, called a squash at Harrow by 1886;[6][1][2] the game itself was squash or squash rackets by 1899,[6][2] and American English had squash tennis by 1901.[1] A crowded gathering of people was a squash from 1884, and a social meeting from 1904.[6] In Scotland and parts of England the verb meant to splash or dash water about.[15] In recent American slang, to squash a quarrel is to put an end to it.[16]

Timeline

  • before 1325 – squachen, to annul, destroy, crush.[1]
  • c. 1390 – to smash or crush something (MED's first quotation).[5]
  • 1565 – to squeeze or crush into a flat mass.[6][3]
  • 1590 – noun, an unripe pea pod, in Shakespeare.[1][3]
  • 1611 – the act or sound of squashing.[6]
  • 1671 – to move with a splashing sound.[6]
  • 1766 – adverb, with a squash.[6][3]
  • c. 1777 – to suppress or put down.[6]
  • 1886 – the soft rubber ball of a racket game.[6][1]
  • 1888 – something squashed, as in lemon squash.[1]
  • 1899 – the game of squash rackets.[6][2]

Meanings

Verb

  1. To press or squeeze something into a flat mass or a pulp; to crush: She squashed the wasp with a rolled-up magazine.[14][3][6]
  2. To put down or suppress: The rumour was squashed within a day.[14][3][6]
  3. To silence or humiliate a person, especially with a cutting reply.[14]
  4. To force into a small space; to crowd or pack tightly: Five of us squashed into the back seat.[14][12]
  5. To make a sucking or squelching sound, or to move with such a sound.[14][6]
  6. To be flattened or crushed under pressure or on impact.[6][14]

Noun

  1. (British) A drink made from fruit juice or syrup diluted with water: orange squash.[14][3]
  2. A game for two or four players with rackets and a small soft ball, played in a walled court; squash rackets.[6][2]
  3. A crowd of people in a confined space; a crush.[14][6]
  4. Something squashed; a crushed mass.[14][3][6]
  5. The sound or impact of a soft heavy body falling, or a squelching sound.[3][6]
  6. (obsolete) Something soft and easily crushed, especially an unripe pea pod.[3][6][13]

Word family

  • squasher
  • squashy
  • squash rackets
  • squash tennis
  • squash ball

squash2 vegetable

Etymology

The vegetable is a shortening of the Narragansett word askutasquash,[2][1][12][17] which Etymonline and Barnhart gloss as "the green things that may be eaten raw":[2][1] it is formed from a word meaning "green, raw, uncooked" and one meaning "eaten",[2][8] and its final -ash is a plural ending, as in succotash.[6][2][12] Merriam-Webster gives the source as Natick and Narragansett,[3] and Partridge compares Massachusett askoot-asquash.[18] An earlier English form was isquoutersquash,[3][1] and the OED compares squanter-squash.[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A gourd of one of the trailing plants of the genus Cucurbita, eaten as a vegetable: 1643, in Roger Williams's A Key into the Language of America,[6][1] an American English word.[1] Merriam-Webster dates the first known use to 1634.[3]

Semantic evolution

From 1661 the name was used for the plant as well as the fruit.[6] Kinds were soon told apart with modifiers, from 1731 in Philip Miller's Gardeners Dictionary,[6] and today American usage divides them into summer and winter squashes.[3] The squash bug, which feeds on the leaves, is named from 1807.[2] In 18th-century Gloucestershire a pumpkin was called a squash.[15] In 19th-century American campus slang squash or squash-head was a fool.[16]

Timeline

  • 1634 – first known use, according to Merriam-Webster.[3]
  • 1643 – the gourd, in Roger Williams.[6][1]
  • 1661 – the plant.[6]
  • 1807 – squash bug.[2]
  • 1855 – squash-head, a fool, in American slang.[16]

Meanings

Noun

  1. The fleshy fruit of any of various plants of the genus Cucurbita, with a thick rind, cooked and eaten as a vegetable: We roasted the squash with garlic.[7][3][12]
  2. A bushy or trailing plant that bears such fruit.[7][3][6]

Word family

  • summer squash
  • winter squash
  • acorn squash
  • squash bug

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  4. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  5. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  7. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
  8. ^ a b c d Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
  9. ^ Anglo-Norman Dictionary (AND2), Aberystwyth University, anglo-norman.net (2nd ed., 2005–)
  10. ^ Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
  11. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
  12. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  13. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  14. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
  15. ^ a b Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
  16. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  17. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  18. ^ Partridge, Eric (1966), Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 4th ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul