Also 7 squelche, 8–9 squelsh. [f. as prec. Cf. QUELCH v.]
1. trans. To fall, drop or stamp upon (something soft) with crushing or squashing force; to crush in this way.
1624. Middleton, Game at Chess, V. iii. The Fat Bishop hath so overlaid me, So squelch’d and squeezed me, I’ve no verjuice left in me!
a. 1625. Fletcher, Nice Valour, V. i. Oh ’twas your luck and mine to be squelch’d, Mr. ’Has stamped my very puddings into Pancakes.
1719. Baynard, Health (1740), 30. Besides your guts, if fat, it squelches, And causes fumes, and sour belches.
1825. Hone, Every-day Bk., I. 1198. His left leg stood upon another dog squelched by his weight.
1850. Kingsley, Alton Locke, xxxvi. (1879), 377. My cousin, as he turned away, thrust the stone back with his foot, and squelched me flat.
1880. Daily Tel., 9 Dec., 4/1. The smallest of the family of steam hammers will squelch it as thin as a sixpence at a single blow.
refl. 1859. Blackw. Mag., LXXXV. 302/1. Each man squelching himself … in the corner that best pleased him.
fig. 1862. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., XII. xi. (1872), IV. 250. Ambitious persons often … get squelched to pieces by bringing the Twelve Labours of Hercules on Unherculean backs.
b. fig. To squash or crush; to put down or suppress thoroughly or completely.
1864. Temperance Spectator, 1 Dec., 184. We readily concede that the doctrine … has been utterly squelched by the Doctor’s weighty arguments.
1872. H. W. Beecher, Chr. World Pulpit, I. 207/3. The time is coming when you cannot squelch a barbarian horde in Pennsylvania without having it known throughout … the world.
1878. Huxley, in Life (1900), I. xxxiii. 488. It would be so nice to squelch that pompous impostor.
1890. Spectator, 8 Nov., 632/2. The movement for ‘reciprocity’ in Canada … will be squelched at once.
2. intr. † a. To make squelchy sounds. Obs.–1
1709. Brit. Apollo, No. 38. 3/2. Still Coughing or Squelching,… [She] is all that is ugly and old.
b. To fall with a squelch.
1755. Johnson, To Squab, v.n., to fall down plump or flat; to squelsh or squash.
1825. Britton, Beauties Wilts, III. 378. Squelch, to fall heavily.
1865–. in dial. glossaries, etc. (Derby, Warw., Wilts.).
c. To emit a squelch or squelches; to spout in squelches.
1834. J. Wilson, Noctes Ambr., Wks. 1856, IV. 25. Their sodden corpses squelchin at every spang o’ the flying dragons.
1892. Stevenson & L. Osbourne, Wrecker, v. 68. My boots began to squelch and pipe along the restaurant floors.
1905. J. H. McCarthy, Dryad, xxv. 259. Water was squelching and oozing and bubbling over his horse’s fetlocks.
d. To walk or tread heavily in water or wet ground, or with water in the shoes, so as to make a splashing sound.
1849. Alb. Smith, Pottleton Legacy, xxiv. 254. You’d … pass all your time in squelching about soppy fields.
1851. Hawthorne, Amer. Note-bks. (1883), 404. He squelching along all the way, with his india-rubber shoes full of water.
1881. Blackw. Mag., July, 110/1. In another moment [we] were ‘squelching’ over the sloppy ground.
Hence Squelched ppl. a.
1837. Carlyle, Misc. (1840), V. 98. I behold thee … a squelched Putrefaction, here on London pavements.
1867. F. Harrison, Autobiog. Mem. (1911), I. xviii. 343. Unmistakably … the squelched rats will squeal.
