pash

present singular third person pashes · participle present pashing · participle past pashed · past pashed

1. AustraliaNew ZealandslangTo snog, to make out, to kiss.

   2005, Gabrielle Morrissey, Urge: Hot Secrets For Great Sex, HarperCollins Publishers (Australia), unnumbered page, There are hundreds of different types of kisses; and there are kissing Kamasutras available in bookshops to help you add variety to your pashing repertoire.

   2 more examples

   ‘You gonna pash her?’ ‘We only just started going together,’ I said. Pash her? Already? I hadn’t even kissed a girl properly yet. ‘Do you know how to pash?’ It sounded like a challenge. Jed Wall was a bit like that. When he wasn’t just hanging he was fighting or pashing or something that no one else was good at.

   2003, Andrew Daddo, You’re Dropped!, →ISBN

   A few hours later, having pashed near the bins outside a supermarket, I stumbled towards my tube station certain I had met the love of my life.

   2023 January 31, Clem Bastow, “My bad trip – I met a handsome Scot with a crossword and thought it was true love”, in The Guardian

plural pashes

1. AustraliaNew ZealandA passionate kiss.

   Anyway, the point is, my first pash — or snog, or whatever you want to call it — was so bloody awful it’s a miracle I ever opened my mouth again.

   2003, Frances Whiting, Oh to Be a Marching Girl, page 18

   Synonyms: snog

2. A romantic infatuation; a crush.

   Not until the outcome of Denise’s pash did I admit that my pash on Joan had been very different.

   2002, Thelma Ruck Keene, The Handkerchief Drawer: An Autobiography in Three Parts, page 92

   2 more examples

   ‘It isn’t a pash. Nancy Burke’s got a pash on Mr Richards and Mary Parkin has a pash on Miss Taylor, and so have other girls. But I haven’t got a pash on Rupert. It isn’t like that. I know it isn’t. I know it isn’t.’

   1988, Catherine Cookson, “Bill Bailey’s Daughter”, in Bill Bailey: An Omnibus, published 1997, page 166

   At school it was called a pash. Having a pash on big handsome Robin, who used to cycle up to the village in his holidays from boarding school, and smile at her. She still had a pash on Robin. He still smiled at her.

   2010, Gwyneth Daniel, A Suitable Distance, page 82

3. The object of a romantic infatuation; a crush.
4. Any obsession or passion.

plural pashes

1. obsoleteThe head.

   Leo[ntes]: Thou want′ſt a rough paſh, & the shoots that I haue, / To be full like me:

   c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]

present singular third person pashes · participle present pashing · participle past pashed · past pashed

1. dialectalTo throw (something), as if to break (it).
2. To smash; to crush; to bash; to break into pieces.

   I'll pash him o'er the face.

   c. 1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]

   2 more examples

   Hercules, that in his infancie Did paſh the iawes of Serpents venemous:

   c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii

   [...] 'tis a brute must walk / Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

   1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section XII

3. To fall heavily or forcefully.

   ... the rain came "pashing" down again and drove her indoors.

   1921, Eleanor Acland, Dark Side Out, page 197

   1 more example

   ... sent a heavy rain-drop pashing in our faces and now woke the woods with rattling peals of thunder.

   1838, Robert Montgomery Bird, A night on the Terrapin rocks. The Mammoth cave. The bloody broad-horn, page 71

plural pashes

1. A smash, a crash; a heavy collision, fall, or blow, or the sound made by it.

   […] the pash of a crushed skull, an oath, or a grunt caused by the impact of a rifle's muzzle against the abdomen transfixed by its bayonet.

   1909, Ambrose Bierce, The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce ...: In the midst of life (tales of soldiers and civilians), page 160

   1 more example

   [Neither] the pash of a hoof on the marge, crack of whip, nor the shout of driver gladdens the quiet: the foul weeds knot, strangling the sluggish flow of the waterway; […]

   1917, Gilbert Frankau, The City of Fear, and Other Poems, page 5

2. dialectalA sudden and heavy fall or gush of rain, snow, hail or other water.

   Mony a thunner pash it's been oot in.

   1877, William Morley Egglestone, Betty Podkins, section 13

   4 more examples

   BACKEN, To retard, "This pash o'rain 'ul backen our potatoes."

   1828, William Carr, The Dialect of Craven: In the West-Riding of the County of York, page 19

   A pash of rain then raised it about 6 inches, but four dry days reduced it to its previous level.

   1850, Agricultural Drainage, page 43

   ... the water came down with such a pash that ...

   1883, Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and Art, page 90

   Labes, a great fall, or pash of rain or hail, etc.

   1913, Jonathan Swift, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, D. D., page 299