squash

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various tendril-bearing plants of the genus Cucurbita, having fleshy edible fruit with a leathery rind and unisexual flowers.
2. n. The fruit of any of these plants, eaten as a vegetable.
3. v. To beat, squeeze, or press into a pulp or a flattened mass; crush. See Synonyms at crush.
4. v. To put down or suppress; quash: squash a revolt.
5. v. To silence or fluster, as with crushing words: squash a heckler.
6. v. To become crushed, flattened, or pulpy, as by pressure or impact.
7. v. To move with a splashing or sucking sound, as when walking through boggy ground.
8. n. The act or sound of squashing.
9. n. The fact or condition of being squashed.
10. n. A crushed or crowded mass: a squash of people.
11. n. Sports A racket game played in a closed walled court with a rubber ball.
12. n. Chiefly British A citrus-based soft drink.
13. adv. With a squashing sound.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To crush; smash; beat or press into pulp or a flat mass.
2. To splash; make a splashing sound.
3. n. Something soft and easily crushed; something unripe and soft; especially, an unripe pea-pod.
4. n. Something that has been crushed into a soft mass.
5. n. A sudden fall of a heavy soft body; a shock of soft bodies.
6. n. The fruit of an annual plant of the gourd kind, belonging to one of several species of the genus Cucurbita; also, the plant itself. The very numerous and divergent varieties of the cultivated squash are reduced by good authority to three species—C. maxima, the great or winter squash; C. Pepo, including the pumpkin and also a large part of the ordinary squashes; and C. moschata, the musky, China, or Barbary squash. The last has a club-sharped, pear-shaped, or long cylindrical fruit with a glaucous-whitish surface. The other squashes may for practical purposes be divided into summer and winter kinds. Among the latter is the C. maxima, of which the fruit is spheroidal in form and often of great size, sometimes weighing 240 pounds. A variety of this is the crowned or turban squash, whose fruit has a circular projection at the top, the mark of the adherent calyx-tube. Other winter squashes are of moderate size, and commonly either narrowed toward the base into a neck which in the “crook-necks” is curved to one side, or egg-shaped and pointed at the ends, as in the (Boston) marrow, long a standard in America, or the still better Hubbard squash. The winter squash can be preserved through the season. The summer squash has a very short vine, hence sometimes called bush-squash. Its fruit is smaller, and is either a crook-neck or depressed in form, somewhat hemispherical with a scalloped border (see simlin); it is colored yellow, white, green, or green and white, Squashes are more grown in America than elsewhere, but also, especially the winter squashes, in continental Europe, and generally in temperate and tropical climates. In Great Britain the only ordinary squash is the vegetable marrow (see marrow), or succade gourd. The summer squash is eaten before maturity, prepared by boiling. The winter squash is boiled or roasted; in France and the East it is largely used in soups and ragouts, in America often made into pies. It is also used as food for animals.
7. n. The musquash or muskrat, Fiber zibethicus.
8. n. An indoor or court game developed from a combination of lawn-tennis and court-tennis. The court is walled on three sides, and the players strike a ball alternately above a certain line on the back wall. The ball is similar to a tennis-ball of rubber covered with felt, but is made capable of bearing harder hitting because it is designed to be driven with great force against the walls.

Wiktionary

1. n. uncountable A sport played in a walled court with a soft rubber ball and bats like tennis racquets.
2. n. UK A soft drink made from a fruit-based concentrate diluted with water.
3. n. A place or a situation where people have limited space to move.
4. n. obsolete, countable Something soft and easily crushed; especially, an unripe pod of peas.
5. n. obsolete, countable, pejorative Something unripe or soft.
6. n. obsolete, countable A sudden fall of a heavy, soft body; also, a shock of soft bodies.
7. v. transitive To beat or press into pulp or a flat mass; to crush.
8. v. transitive, intransitive To compress or restrict (oneself) into a small space; to squeeze.
9. n. countable (botany) A plant and its fruit of the genus Cucurbita, or gourd kind.
10. n. The edible fruit of this plant, or this fruit prepared as a dish.
11. n. obsolete, zoo, countable Muskrat.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.), obsolete An American animal allied to the weasel.
2. n. (Bot.) A plant and its fruit of the genus Cucurbita, or gourd kind.
3. v. To beat or press into pulp or a flat mass; to crush.
4. n. Something soft and easily crushed; especially, an unripe pod of pease.
5. n. Hence, something unripe or soft; -- used in contempt.
6. n. A sudden fall of a heavy, soft body; also, a shock of soft bodies.
7. n. A game much like rackets, played in a walled court with soft rubber balls and bats like tennis rackets; -- called also squash rackets.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a game played in an enclosed court by two or four players who strike the ball with long-handled rackets
2. n. any of numerous annual trailing plants of the genus Cucurbita grown for their fleshy edible fruits
3. v. to compress with violence, out of natural shape or condition
4. n. edible fruit of a squash plant; eaten as a vegetable