or pash, verb. (popular).—To beat; thrash; crush out of shape. Also as subs. (or b) BASHING = a flogging, spec. with the ‘cat’; BASHING-IN = a flogging just after conviction, and BASHING OUT = a flogging just before release from prison; basher = (1) a rough; and (2) = a prize-fighter: see LAMB.
1592. NASHE, Strange Newes, in wks. II. 272. A leane arme put out of the bed shall grind and PASH euerie crum of thy booke into pin-dust.
1622. MASSINGER, The Virgin Martyr, II. ii.
| With Jove’s artillery, shot down at once, | |
| To PASH your gods in pieces. |
1790. A. WILSON, PACK, s.v. 1805. J. NICOL, Poems, s.v. c. 1817. HOGG, Tales, s.v. 1833. SCOTT, Tom Cringle’s Log, s.v.
1877. W. H. THOMSON, Five Years’ Penal Servitude, iii. 157. There were the evidences of former floggings, or ‘BASHINGS,’ as the prisoners call them.
1882. Daily Telegraph, 9 Dec., 2. 6. A man … told witness that he would earn a sovereign if he cared to give a certain woman—the complainant—a couple of black eyes…. His instructions were to follow the man he met in the public-house in Bear Street, and to BASH the woman he would point out to him in Portland Street.
1882. T. A. GUTHRIE (‘F. Anstey’), Vice Versâ, xii. ‘If you have got BASHED about pretty well since you came back, it’s been all your own fault, and you know it.’
1882. Daily Telegraph, 16 Dec. 2. 6. According to the statement of the prosecuting solicitor, this was the man who undertook to point out to Leech, the professed BASHER, the woman whom he was to assault in Portland Street.
1883. Standard, 2 March, 6, 7. Mr. Hannay reminded her that when the summons was applied for, the boy’s father had said that the boy was BASHED on the floor, and received a black eye and a bruised head.
1896. GRIFFITHS, Fast and Loose, 143, s.v.
