SQUASH • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Squash

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/skwɑʃ/ Listen

noun

Squash n. (Zool.) An American animal allied to the weasel. (Obs.)

Squash n. (Bot.) A plant and its fruit of the genus Cucurbita, or gourd kind. Note: The species are much confused. The long-neck squash is called Cucurbita verrucosa, the Barbary or China squash, Cucurbita moschata, and the great winter squash, Cucurbita maxima, but the distinctions are not clear.

Squash beetle (Zool.), a small American beetle (Diabrotica vittata, syn. Galeruca vittata) which is often abundant and very injurious to the leaves of squash, cucumber, etc. It is striped with yellow and black. The name is applied also to other allied species.

Squash bug (Zool.), a large black American hemipterous insect (Coreus tristis syn. Anasa tristis) injurious to squash vines.

Squash n.

Something soft and easily crushed; especially, an unripe pod of pease. "Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; as a squash is before 't is a peascod."

Hence, something unripe or soft; used in contempt. "This squash, this gentleman."

A sudden fall of a heavy, soft body; also, a shock of soft bodies. "My fall was stopped by a terrible squash."

A game much like rackets, played in a walled court with soft rubber balls and bats like tennis rackets; called also squash rackets.

verb

Squash v. t. (past & past part. squashed; pres. part. squashing) To beat or press into pulp or a flat mass; to crush.

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Etymology of 'Squash'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Squash" Quotes from Famous Books

... was an early luncheon," the grandmother said, discontentedly. "She was playing squash, or tennis, ...

— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... ornamented with hanging garlands of various climbing vegetables, both shrubs and plants. One of these had white flowers, each as big as a small funnel, the tube five or six inches in length, and not thicker than a tobacco-pipe. It was curious to observe the wild squash, (a species of cucurbita,) which grew upon the lofty limbs of the trees: its yellow fruit, somewhat of the size and shape of a large orange, pendant over the water. In some parts there were steep cliffs on each side of the river. During the middle of the day the weather was so intensely ...

— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... there was a lot in his record wasn't meant for the newspapers," continued Cargan reflectively. "And it didn't get there. Nap was lucky. He had it on the reformers there. They couldn't squash him with the power ...

— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... labour of months go for naught in the blight of an evening's frost, or the sweep of a prairie fire. So here on this virgin isle, in soil whose sod had never been turned, they sowed from the bins of the slumbering ship. Wheat and oats and flax, brought from the Argentina plains; potatoes, squash and beet-root; even beans and peas were tried, but with small hope. And there were women ready to till the soil and work the gardens, women to draw the strangely fashioned ploughshares as willing beasts of burden, to ...

— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon

... phenomenal squash make up for all that?" she asked. "It would to me. I'm dying to see the phenomenal squash, and the ...

— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)

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