[f. SQUASH v.1 or sb.1]
1. of fruit, etc.: Having a soft or pulpy consistency; lacking in firmness.
1698. Fryer, Acc. E. India & P., 130. Having gone near Fifty Miles without eating more than a few squashy Figs. Ibid., 182. The Fruit … squashy, of a better Relish than Smell.
1712. J. Morton, Nat. Hist. Northamptonsh., 478. The Ear [of wheat] was seemingly full and good, but it prov’d to be squashy, and had no Kernel.
1837. Hook, Jack Brag, xx. A squashy French pie, made by a Cowes confectioner.
1847. Halliw., Squashy, soft, pulpy, watery, Warw[ick].
1883. Emma J. Worboise, Sissie, xix. Squashy roly-poly pudding, with all the jam boiled out, and the water boiled in.
fig. 1859. Geo. Eliot, Adam Bede, xv. Them young gells are like th’ unripe grain; they’ll make good meal by-and-by, but they’re squashy as yet.
2. Of ground, etc.: Soft with, full of, water; soaking, marshy.
1751. England’s Gazetteer, s.v. Daventry, The banks in it resemble those of ponds and canals, with a watry squashy ground between them.
1818. Keats, Lett., Wks. 1889, III. 163. I was damped by slipping one leg into a squashy hole.
1822. Blackw. Mag., XII. 335. A squashy knowe in an undrained quagmire.
1889. Longman’s Mag., Aug., 379. Away we go again, floundering heavily through the squashy ground.
transf. 1877. W. S. Gilbert, Foggerty’s Fairy (1892), 302. We had a squashy walk over a pathless and furzy common.
3. Of the nature of a squash or squashing.
1865. E. Burritt, Walk to Land’s End, 284. That child … comes down … in a squashy concussion with its forehead against the floor.
1873. Spectator, 23 Aug., 1069. Alongside of you comes up an oozy, squashy sound of the advancing tide.
4. Having a squashed or flattened look.
1895. Zangwill, Master, II. iv. Matt pointed out that the eyes were wrong, that pupils should be round, not squashy.
