subs. (colloquial).1. A smash, a soft or flat mass; and (2) a mellay: spec. (Harrow), see quot. 1876. As verb. = (1) to crush or smash: also TO GO SQUASH = to collapse; and (2) to silence by word or deed. Hence SQUASHER, SQUASHINESS, and SQUASHY.
1726. SWIFT, Gullivers Travels, ii. 1. One of the reapers approaching made me apprehend that with the next step I should be SQUASHED to death under his foot. Ibid., ii. 7. My fall was stopped by a terrible SQUASH.
18249. LANDOR, Imaginary Conversations, Southey and Porson, ii. Give a trifle of strength and austerity to the SQUASHINESS of our friends poetry.
1854. DICKENS, Hard Times, xi. Wet through and through; with her feet squelching and SQUASHING in her shoes whenever she moved.
1867. W. L. COLLINS, The Public Schools [Harrow], 312. The gravel cut the leather case of the ball occasionally, as well as the hands and faces of those who scrambled over it in a SQUASH which Rugby men know as a scrummage, and Etonians as a rooge.
1888. BROUGHTON, Fragile, in Harpers Magazine, lxxviii. Dec., 80. It seemed churlish to pass him by without a sign, especially as he took off his SQUASH of a hat to me.
1898. HUME NISBET, A Sweet Sinner, vi. George Keath was a stalwart man and the like of this music teacher he could have settled and SQUASHED in half a minute.
3. (Harrow).Racquets played with a soft india-rubber ball: the ball is also known as a SQUASH.