Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • transitive verb To put down or suppress forcibly and completely.
  • transitive verb To put an end to or destroy.
  • transitive verb To annul or put an end to (a court order, indictment, or court proceedings).

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A pompion.
  • noun Same as squash (?).
  • To beat down or beat in pieces; crash.
  • To crush; subdue; put down summarily; quell; extinguish; put an end to.
  • To be shaken with a noise; make the noise of water when shaken.
  • To make void; annul; in law, to annul, abate, overthrow, or set aside for insufficiency or other cause: as, to quash an indictment.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To beat down, or beat in pieces; to dash forcibly; to crush.
  • transitive verb To crush; to subdue; to suppress or extinguish summarily and completely.
  • noun Same as squash.
  • intransitive verb To be shaken, or dashed about, with noise.
  • transitive verb (Law) To abate, annul, overthrow, or make void.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb To defeat forcibly.
  • verb To void or suppress (a subpoena, decision, etc.).

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb put down by force or intimidation
  • verb declare invalid

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English quashen, from Old French quasser, from Medieval Latin quassāre, to shatter, from Latin; see squash.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English quassen, from Anglo-Norman casser, quasser, from Medieval Latin quassāre, alteration (influenced by quassāre, to crush, shatter) of cassāre, from Latin cassus, empty, void; see kes- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French quasser, from Latin quassāre, present active infinitive of quassō.

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word quash.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.