Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To beat, squeeze, or press into a pulp or a flattened mass; crush. synonym: crush.
  • intransitive verb To put down or suppress; quash.
  • intransitive verb To silence or fluster, as with crushing words.
  • intransitive verb To become crushed, flattened, or pulpy, as by pressure or impact.
  • intransitive verb To move with a splashing or sucking sound, as when walking through boggy ground.
  • noun The act or sound of squashing.
  • noun Something that has been squashed.
  • noun A crushed or crowded mass.
  • noun Sports A game played on a four-walled court by two or four players who use long-handled rackets to hit a small rubber ball against the front wall, with play stopping if the ball bounces twice on the floor or does not reach the front wall after a stroke.
  • noun Chiefly British A citrus-based soft drink.
  • adverb With a squashing sound.
  • noun Any of various bushy or vining plants of the genus Cucurbita, having unisexual flowers and fleshy edible fruit with a thick rind when mature.
  • noun The fruit of any of these plants, eaten as a vegetable.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun 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.
  • To crush; smash; beat or press into pulp or a flat mass.
  • To splash; make a splashing sound.
  • noun The fruit of an annual plant of the gourd kind, belonging to one of several species of the genus Cucurbita; also, the plant itself.
  • noun Something soft and easily crushed; something unripe and soft; especially, an unripe pea-pod.
  • noun Something that has been crushed into a soft mass.
  • noun A sudden fall of a heavy soft body; a shock of soft bodies.
  • noun The musquash or muskrat, Fiber zibethicus.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) A plant and its fruit of the genus Cucurbita, or gourd kind.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a small American beetle (Diabrotica vittata, syn. Galeruca vittata) which is often abundant and very injurious to the leaves of squash, cucumber, etc. It is striped with yellow and black. The name is applied also to other allied species.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a large black American hemipterous insect (Coreus tristis syn. Anasa tristis) injurious to squash vines.
  • transitive verb To beat or press into pulp or a flat mass; to crush.
  • noun (Zoöl.), obsolete An American animal allied to the weasel.
  • noun Something soft and easily crushed; especially, an unripe pod of pease.
  • noun Hence, something unripe or soft; -- used in contempt.
  • noun A sudden fall of a heavy, soft body; also, a shock of soft bodies.
  • noun A game much like rackets, played in a walled court with soft rubber balls and bats like tennis rackets; -- called also squash rackets.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

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

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English squachen, from Old French esquasser, from Vulgar Latin *exquassāre : Latin ex-, intensive pref.; see ex– + Latin quassāre, to shatter, frequentative of quatere, to shake; see kwēt- in Indo-European roots.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From alteration of Narragansett askútasquash.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

shortening of musquash

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Shortening of squantersquash, from a Narragansett word.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Originally the word askutasquash

    March 7, 2007

  • Yeah, it's a Narragansett word.. the 'u' should actually be accented like this: askútasquash

    January 31, 2008

  • sQUASH

    May 31, 2008