SQUASH • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • 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

... The economy's base is agriculture, which contributes 40% to GDP. Squash, coconuts, bananas, and vanilla beans are the main crops, and agricultural exports make up two-thirds of total exports. The country must import a high proportion of its food, mainly from New Zealand. The manufacturing sector accounts for only 11% of GDP. ...

— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... do have some things—little no-account things— to decide every once in a while. Sometimes they bother me, too— although they probably wouldn't anybody with a head instead of a Hubbard squash on his shoulders. The only way I can decide 'em is to set down and open court, put 'em on trial, as ...

— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the light, the colour? Was it like Henley? Well, perhaps it might be considered as a mad, fantastic Henley. Replace the fair ladies and the startling "blazers" with veiled houris and their lords clad in all colours of the rainbow; for one immortal "Squash" put hundreds of "squashes," all playing upon weird instruments, or singing in "a singular minor key"; let the smell of outlandish cookery be wafted to you from the "family" boats and from the bivouacs on the shore; let a constant uproar fall upon your ears as when ...

— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... have fifty hills,' said Nat, 'and four vines in each hill, I shall have two hundred vines in all; and if there is one squash on each vine, there will ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various

... above-ground, large-lobed and vigorous. Large and vigorous appeared the bugs, all gleaming in green and gold, like the wolf on the fold, and stopped up all the stomata and ate up all the parenchyma, till my squash-leaves looked as if they had grown for the sole purpose of illustrating net-veined organizations. A universal bug does not indicate a special want of skill in ...

— Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn

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