Word.ws English Dictionary

bash

/bæʃ/

bash verb: to strike heavily; to beat.

Verb (1)

bash (third-person singular simple present bashes, present participle bashing, simple past and past participle bashed)

  1. (informal) To strike heavily; to beat.
    • The thugs kept bashing the cowering victim.
    • If the engine won't start, bash it with this hammer.
  2. (informal) To collide; used with into or together.
    • Don't bash into me with that shopping trolley.
    • The bulls backed apart and ran together, tusks clashing — Ed held his trunk down while Conrad curled his high over his head, out of the way of Ed's tusks as the faces bashed together.1998, Katharine Payne, Silent Thunder, page 74
  3. (informal, transitive) To criticize harshly.
    • He bashed my ideas.
    • The entertainment industry, the artistic community, and much of the educational establishment, which so profoundly influence American culture, relentlessly assault religion, promote promiscuity, encourage illegitimacy, and bash America.1994, Richard Nixon, “America Beyond Peace”, in Beyond Peace, New York: Random House, →ISBN, page 236

Noun

bash (plural bashes)

  1. (informal) A forceful blow or impact.
    • He got a bash on the head.
  2. (informal) A large party; a gala event.
    • They had a big bash to celebrate their tenth anniversary.
    • The party level ramps up at Thornaby, where a gaggle of women on a 50th birthday bash join us.2022 November 30, Paul Bigland, “Destination Oban: a Sunday in Scotland”, in RAIL, number 971, page 74
  3. (UK, informal) An attempt at doing something.
    • give something a bash
    • I'm not sure I'll be any good at this, but let me have a bash.
    Synonyms:
    lash

Verb (2)

bash (third-person singular simple present bashes, present participle bashing, simple past and past participle bashed)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To abash (make ashamed)
    • His countenance was bold and bashed not.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 37

Proper noun (1) capitalized: Bash

Bash

  1. The Free Software Foundation's command interpreter (the "shell") for UNIX-like operating systems.
  2. The scripting language provided with this interpreter.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Bash

Bash

  1. A diminutive of the male given name Sebastian.

bash meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam

bash in Urdu

ضرب, کوٹنا, پیٹنا

bash in Bengali

ব্যাশ করতে

bash in Telugu

బాష్ చేయడానికి, బష్ చెయ్యడానికి, బాష్ చెయ్యడానికి

bash in Malayalam

hit, strike, beat
അടിക്കുക, ക്രൂരമായി പ്രഹരിക്കുക, പ്രഹരിക്കുക, തല്ലുക, ഓറുക, ഇടിക്കുക
smash, crash, run
കൂട്ടിമുട്ടുക, മുട്ടുക, ഇടിക്കുക, കൂട്ടിയടിക്കുക, അപകടം സംഭവിക്കുക, ആപദിക്കുക
hit, blow, rap
പ്രഹരം, പ്രഹാരം, പ്രഹൃതി, തല്ല്, കരാഘാതം, കരാസ്ഫോടം
party, get-together, (social) gathering
തകർപ്പൻ സത്കാരം, പൊടിപൊടിച്ച സത്കാരം, വിരുന്ത്, വിരുന്ന്, സൽക്കാരം, വിരുന്നുസല്ക്കാരം
More languagesFewer languages
bash in Kannada
ಜೋರಾಗಿ ಹೊಡೆ, ಭಾರಿ ಹೊಡೆತ
bash in Odia
ବଶ୍ କରିବା ପାଇଁ

Examples of bash in a sentence

  • This was my first bash at macramé, so I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out.
  • It was planned that the sick men were to crawl over and simultaneously seize the fire-arms and bash us with them while the women flung themselves upon the trackers.1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 141:
  • It isn't the creature's fault that it bashed its head against a tree outside our hole.1951, C. S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia:

All 40 example sentences with bash

Synonyms of bash

Forms of bash

Verb
third-person singular presentbashes
present participlebashing
past participlebashed
pastbashed
Noun
pluralbashes

Origin of bash

From Middle English *basshen, *basken, likely from Old Norse *baska (“to strike”), akin to Swedish basa (“to baste, whip, lash, flog”), Danish baske (“to beat, strike, cudgel”), German patschen (“to slap”)

From Middle English baschen, baissen. See abash.

Short for Bourne-again shell, a pun on the name of the Bourne shell, an earlier Unix shell designed by Stephen R. Bourne, and the Christian concept of being "born again".

Words formed from bash

Phrases with bash

Words that rhyme with bash

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about bash

What does bash mean?
Bash means to strike heavily; to beat.
What is bash in Urdu?
Bash in Urdu is ضرب, کوٹنا, پیٹنا. See Bash meaning in Urdu.
How do you use bash in a sentence?
This was my first bash at macramé, so I'm quite pleased with how it's turned out.
What part of speech is bash?
Bash can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bash?
Bash is pronounced /bæʃ/.
What is the past tense of bash?
The past tense of bash is bashed.

Words near bash in the dictionary

  1. BASF
  2. Basford
  3. Basgallop
  4. Basgallops
  5. Basger
  6. bash
  7. bash about
  8. bash and grab
  9. bash and grabs
  10. bash in
  11. bash into shape

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bash (page history and authors); Bash (page history and authors); bash (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bash (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bash (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bash (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); bash (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); bash (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-bash.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bash.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-Bash.wav.

Cite this entry: “bash.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bash. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.