or squelsh, subs. (old).—A hard hit, a heavy fall; espec. one under something or somebody: also SQUELCHER. As verb. = to crush, to SQUASH (q.v.).

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  1624.  MIDDLETON, A Game at Chess, v. 3.

        ’Sfoot, this Fat Bishop hath so overlaid me,
So SQUELCH’D and squeez’d me, I’ve no verjuice left in me!

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  1663.  BUTLER, Hudibras, I. ii. 933.

        But Ralpho, who had now begun    T’adventure resurrection
            From heavy SQUELCH, and had got up.

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  1673.  COTTON, Burlesque upon Burlesque: or, The Scoffer Scofft (1734), 242.

        And yet was not the SQUELCH so ginger,
But that I sprain’d my little Finger.

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  1688.  J. GRUBB, St. George for England, Part II., l. 23.

        But George he did the dragon fell,
  And gave him a plaguy SQUELCH.

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  1853.  REV. E. BRADLEY (‘Cuthbert Bede’), The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman. There ’s a SQUELCHER in the bread-basket that ’ll stop your dancing, my kivey!

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  1866.  [Quoted by C. F. BROWNE in Artemus Ward Among the Fenians, ‘Preliminary.’] SQUELCHED, exterminated … and extinguished the cantankerous Senators.

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  1886.  J. W. PALMER, After His Kind, 120. Luke gazed shamefaced at the nosegay in his button-hole and was SQUELCHED.

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  1902.  Pall Mall Gazette, 4 Dec., 2, 2. Politicians in Dublin have been experiencing a delirious titillation of the bump of combativeness by an announcement that Mr. Redmond is to descend upon Dundalk with a design to SQUELCH Mr. Healy.

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