the.com/squash
a vegetable, a verb, and a sport all violently agreeing to compress something
means To crush or squeeze something into a flatter, softer, or more compact form — or, as a noun, the gourd-like vegetable, the racket sport, or a soft cordial drink, each named for that act of compressing.
from The verb 'squash' comes from Old French 'esquasser,' to crush or smash, built from Latin 'quassare,' to shatter (a frequentative of 'quatere,' to shake) — so at heart it shares roots with 'quash.' The vegetable, though, is unrelated and a quirk of coincidence: it's a shortening of 'askutasquash,' a word from Narragansett (an Algonquian language of New England) meaning roughly 'eaten raw' or 'green thing eaten,' which English ears trimmed down to a familiar-sounding 'squash.' The sport takes its name from the soft, squashable rubber ball it's played with.
- oldest crop
- Domesticated over 10,000 years ago in Mexico
- botanical truth
- It's a fruit, masquerading as a vegetable
- the sport
- Played at lethal speeds in a sealed box
- flower food
- Squash blossoms are stuffed, fried, and devoured
- giant kin
- Pumpkins are just squash with better PR
world open squash championship — annual tournament in philadelphia since 1976, oldest professional squash event
khan family squash dynasty — jahangir khan won 6 world titles (1983-1985, 1988, 1990-1991) and 99 consecutive matches
egypt squash dominance — nour el sherbini and tarek momen hold #1 rankings, egypt won 2023 world team championship