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squash

/skwɑːʃ//skwɒʃ/·verb
to crush something flat with pressure or a blow
Fig. 1 — The tomato sits on the table being round, which is its whole job.
01Definition

To squash is to flatten by force: something presses or lands, and what was tall and round spreads sideways because it had nowhere else to go — a tomato under a dropped bag, a hat sat on, commuters squashed into a carriage. From Old French esquasser, ultimately Latin quassare, 'to shake to pieces', though English kept the flattening and let the shattering go. The verb extends to anything crushed decisively out of existence: you squash a rumour, a rebellion, a hope. The vegetable and the racquet sport share the spelling by accident, not ancestry.

02In use
  • iThe ripe tomatoes at the bottom of the bag had been squashed flat by the milk.
  • iiEight of us squashed into a car built for five and nobody could reach the seatbelts.
  • iiiThe minister moved to squash the rumour before it could spread any further.
03Collocations
  • squash something flat
  • squashed tomatoes
  • squash a rumour
  • squash into a seat
  • squash a rebellion

Family squashed (adjective) · squashy (adjective)

04Relations

=crush, flatten, squeeze, compress, mash

≠stretch, expand, inflate

06TOEFL & IELTS

Informal-everyday: perfect for IELTS Speaking ('we were squashed in like sardines') but in academic writing the figurative sense dresses up — prefer suppress or quash for rumours and dissent in an essay. That near-twin quash is the real trap: a court quashes a verdict (formal, legal), a heel squashes a beetle (physical, informal); the two are different verbs, and only one of them leaves juice. The unrelated noun senses — the vegetable, the sport — never take an object and are easy to tell apart in context.

07Asked
Is it squash a rumour or quash a rumour?
Both are in use, but they are different verbs. Quash is the formal, legal one — courts quash convictions, officials quash rebellions — and in careful or academic prose 'quash a rumour' is the safer choice. Squash is the everyday physical verb doing figurative work: it crushes the rumour the way a boot crushes a can. In an essay, reach for quash or suppress; in conversation, squash is fine.
What is the difference between squash and squish?
Force and finality. To squash is to flatten — real pressure, a changed shape, often damage: the tomato is not recovering. Squish is softer and wetter, as much sound as action: mud squishes underfoot, a sponge squishes and springs back. Something squashed has been crushed; something squishy merely yields when pressed. The pair are sound-symbolic cousins, which is why the ear wants to swap them.
Is the vegetable squash related to the verb?
No — pure coincidence of spelling. The vegetable's name is clipped from askutasquash, the Narragansett word New England colonists learned in the 1600s. The verb came through Old French esquasser from Latin quassare, 'to shake or shatter'. Two continents, two ancestries, one accidental spelling — though English speakers do enjoy that the easiest thing to do to a ripe squash is squash it.
What does squash mean in 'we all squashed into the car'?
To force yourself (or others) into a space too small — pressing until everything fits. This intransitive use turns the flattening image social: the people are the soft things and the car is the press. 'Squashed in', 'squash up' (move along to make room) and 'squashed together' all belong here, and they are conversational English; a formal report would say the vehicle was overcrowded.
Can squash mean to stop something completely?
Yes — the crush becomes abstract: squash a plan, squash speculation, squash any hope of a comeback. The image the scene above plays literally is doing figurative duty: the idea is flattened in one decisive press and does not get up. The register stays informal and expressive; in academic writing the same job is done by suppress, quash or put an end to.
Why is the sport called squash?
After its ball. The game grew out of rackets at Harrow School in the 1800s, played with a softer rubber ball that could be squashed in the hand — and that squashed against the wall instead of bouncing hard. The squashable ball changed the game's tactics, the players named the game for it, and the name stuck when the sport formalised.