squish
UK/skwɪʃ/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
New Zealand/skwəʃ/
squish verb: to squeeze, compress, or crush (especially something moist).
Verb
squish (third-person singular simple present squishes, present participle squishing, simple past and past participle squished)
- To squeeze, compress, or crush (especially something moist).
- The sandwich tasted fine, even though it had got squished in his lunchbox.
- It hadn't rained for a few days, and the water in the ditch had been stagnant long enough for insect larvae to hatch. One landed on her nose, and she squished it before flicking it away from her finger.2008, Robert Muchamore, “Trek”, in The Sleepwalker (CHERUB; 9), London: Hodder Children’s Books, →ISBN, page 90
- To be compressed or squeezed.
- I kicked off my shoes and wiggled my toes on the soft moss. It felt amazing as it squished between my toes, cool and mushy.2013, Julia Crane, Talia Jager, chapter 7, in Broken Promise (A Between Worlds Novel; 2), [Clarksville, Tenn.]: Valknut Press, →ISBN
- To make the sound of something being squeezed or crushed.
- His clothes were dripping wet and his shoes squished with every step.1957, Harvey Weiss, A Gondola for Fun, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, →LCCN, →OCLC
- Annie gripped the notebook like a lance and hurried out the door. Annie Laurance-Darling off to war! But she did wish her shoes would stop squishing as she walked.1988, Carolyn G. Hart, “Mid-morning Monday”, in Honeymoon with Murder (A Death on Demand Mystery; 4), large print edition, Waterville, Me.: Thorndike Press, →ISBN, page 290
- To proceed or make one’s way (somewhere) with the sound of something being squeezed or crushed.
- LIKE A DUCK—Soaked to the point of not caring, this waterlogged pedestrian squishes his way across a downtown street.1952 July 9, “5.60 Inches of Rain Set New Record […]”, in The Sun, final edition, volume 231, number 45, Baltimore, Md.: A. S. Abell Company, →OCLC, page 32, column 3
- We squished down a rutted lane, side-stepped a herd of cows, and eventually found an explanatory plaque.1961, Muriel Beadle, chapter 4, in These Ruins Are Inhabited, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 50
Noun
squish (countable and uncountable, plural squishes)
- The sound or action of something, especially something moist, being squeezed or crushed.
- Alex reached the bottom and Grant heard a squish as she landed in the mud on the bottom of the river.2007, Robin Parrish, chapter 38, in Fearless (The Dominion Trilogy; 2), Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, →ISBN, page 207
- A political moderate; a moderate on a specific issue.
- The cadre of squishes in this party may disgree with me.
- He's a squish on abortion.
- An effect in internal combustion engines which creates sudden turbulence of the air–fuel mixture as the piston approaches top dead center.
- The movement of the jet in the type of cylinder used by Mr. [Harry] Ricardo was an interesting problem. The fuel was shot down quite close to the periphery of the cylindrical surface and yet managed to reach about 80 per cent of the air. He felt doubtful about the existence of a free vortex , and...1934, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Proceedings, volume 128, London: […] [T]he Institution, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 155
- According to this correlation, engine N is the worst, having a requirement about 5 numbers above the mean at low speeds. The only reason which can be suggested for this high requirement is that engine N had a very small “squish” area compared with some of the other engines with a similar type of...1951, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers incorporating the Institute of Automobile Engineers, Automobile Division, Proceedings, London: […] [T]he Institution, →OCLC, page 103, column 2
- A continuum or progression between categories that are normally considered discrete.
- To show that a squish exists, I will cite a number of grammatical processes which work most for verbs, less for adjectives, and least for nouns. That is, to pass from left to right along the squish of (1) is to move in the direction of syntactic inertness, and to move away from syntactic freedom...1972 April 14–16, John Robert Ross, “The Category Squish: Endstation Hauptwort”, in Papers from the Eighth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, […], Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Linguistic...
- The original question remains: Why can so-called MCP [main clause phenomena] occur in some subordinate clauses? However, the data have forced us to alter this question to: Why do some MCP embed in lots of subordinate clauses, and some in few or none? And why do some subordinate clause types embed...1976, Georgia M. Green, “Main Clause Phenomena in Subordinate Clauses”, in Language […], volume 52, Baltimore, Md.: […] Linguistic Society of America at the Waverly Press […], →DOI, →ISSN, →OCLC...
- A non-romantic and generally non-sexual infatuation with somebody one is not dating, or the object of that infatuation; a platonic crush.
- Heck, there is so _little_ love in this world, you really ought not to disparage it when you find it. So she's got a squish on you. I think it's %sweet%, personally.1999 November 21, [T.] <tek3@cx159572-a.elcjn1.sdca.home.com>, “A Transgendered Revolution!”, in soc.support.transgendered (Usenet), archived from the original on 29 Jul 2026
- After feeling these concerns, I was happy to learn about squishes and queerplatonic partners (also known as zucchinis, for some reason unclear to me).2013 September 1, “The 'A' in LGBT”, in Counterpoint […], volume 35, number 1, Cambridge, Mass.: Advocates of Rational Discourse, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 8
- Marmalade.
- Where they are loaves and joints melt as snow in the sunshine; bowls of cream are of no more account than acorn-cups filled with dew; and the 'squish'—as they call the mother's home-made marmalade—has to be renewed daily; […]1879 November, E[liza] Lynn Linton, “The Young Lions”, in Belgravia: An Illustrated London Magazine, volume XL, number CLVII, London: Chatto and Windus, […], published 1880, →OCLC, page 63
- There was a time when the “squish” manufactured by Mr. Frank Cooper at Oxford was not known very extensively outside the world of undergraduates. With the march of events though the fame of Cooper's Oxford marmalade has become world-wide, and the natural consequence is that a new factory has had to...1905 March 11, “Odds and Ends”, in The Sphere: An Illustrated Newspaper for the Home, volume XX, London: Sphere & Tatler, page viii, column 1
squish meaning in Hindi, Urdu and Vietnamese
squish in Hindi
- to squish, to step on, compress, or crush
- मसलना masalnā
squish in Urdu
- کچلنا, مسلنا
squish in Vietnamese
- to squeeze, compress, or crush
- bóp, ép, vắt
Examples of squish in a sentence
- Rather than squishing everything into a tiny window, I have shown only part of my app.2012, Adam Freeman, “Responding to Layout Changes in Code”, in Metro Revealed: Building Windows 8 Apps with XAML and C# (The Expert’s Voice...
- Don’t squish or spray immediately, but sit back and see what happens.2017, Kate Bradbury, “Where to Start: Creating Wildlife Habitats”, in The Wildlife Gardener: Creating a Haven for Birds, Bees and...
- My socks never stop squishing and my underwear chafes.2010, Greg van Eekhout, chapter 11, in Kid vs. Squid, New York, N.Y.: Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers, →ISBN, page 107:
- About two miles up the steep hill that rises above this village, muddy water gushed through tents and small children dressed in light clothing squished around barefoot.1998 September 29, Jane Perlez, “For Kosovo Refugees, a Grim Augur of Winter”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times...
Synonyms of squish
Forms of squish
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | squishes |
| present participle | squishing |
| past participle | squished |
| past | squished |
| Noun | |
| plural | squishes |
Origin of squish
Apparently an alteration of squash, influenced by obsolete squiss (“to squeeze”). Cognate with Scots squische, squies (“to crush, squeeze”). Compare also French esquicher, from Old Occitan esquichar (“to squeeze, squish”). See also squeeze and squelch. The noun is derived from the verb. The linguistic noun sense 4 was coined in 1972 by the American poet and linguist John R. Ross (1938–2025): see the quotation. Noun sense 5 (“a non-romantic and generally non-sexual infatuation”) was formed by analogy with crush and possibly smash, both of which have senses as types of compression as well as types of attraction. It was possibly first attested in 1999 (see the quotation) and then later coined or recoined in 2007 by the user Raisin on the forums of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network as "a milder synonym for the word 'crush'". The term was also used with a similar meaning in a 1997 episode of the TV show Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, though the 2007 coining or recoining was apparently independent.
Words formed from squish
Phrases with squish
Words that rhyme with squish
Questions about squish
- What does squish mean?
- Squish means to squeeze, compress, or crush (especially something moist).
- What is squish in Hindi?
- Squish in Hindi is मसलना (masalnā). See Squish meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use squish in a sentence?
- Rather than squishing everything into a tiny window, I have shown only part of my app.
- What part of speech is squish?
- Squish can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce squish?
- Squish is pronounced /skwɪʃ/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of squish?
- The past tense of squish is squished.
Words near squish in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: squish (page history and authors); मसलना (Hindi) (page history and authors); squish (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). 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-us-squish.ogg.
Cite this entry: “squish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/squish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.