pash

English

Pronunciation

IPA^(key): /pæʃ/
Audio (AU) (file)
Rhymes: -æʃ
Audio (UK) (file)

Etymology 1

Clipping of passion.

Verb

pash (third-person singular simple present pashes, present participle pashing, simple past and past participle pashed)

(Australia, New Zealand, slang) To snog, to make out, to kiss.
- 2003, Andrew Daddo, You’re Dropped!‎, →ISBN:
  ‘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.
- 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.
- 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:
  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.

Noun

pash (plural pashes)

(Australia, New Zealand) A passionate kiss.
- 2003, Frances Whiting, Oh to Be a Marching Girl, page 18,
  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.
A romantic infatuation; a crush.
- 1988, Catherine Cookson, Bill Bailey’s Daughter, in 1997, Bill Bailey: An Omnibus, page 166,
  ‘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.’
- 2002, Thelma Ruck Keene, The Handkerchief Drawer: An Autobiography in Three Parts, page 92,
  Not until the outcome of Denise’s pash did I admit that my pash on Joan had been very different.
- 2010, Gwyneth Daniel, A Suitable Distance, page 82,
  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.
The object of a romantic infatuation; a crush.
Any obsession or passion.

Synonyms

(kiss): snog (UK)

Etymology 2

Scots word for the pate, or head.

Noun

pash (plural pashes)

(UK, dialect, obsolete) A crushing blow.
(UK, dialect, obsolete) A heavy fall of rain or snow.
(obsolete) The head.
- c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The VVinters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, OCLC 606515358, [Act I, scene ii]:
  Leo[ntes]: Thou want′ſt a rough paſh, & the shoots that I haue, / To be full like me:

Etymology 3

Probably of imitative origin, or possibly akin to box (“to fight with the fists”).

Verb

pash (third-person singular simple present pashes, present participle pashing, simple past and past participle pashed)

(dialect) To throw (or be thrown) and break.
To strike; to crush; to smash; to dash into pieces.
- c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], part 1, 2nd edition, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, OCLC 932920499; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:
  Hercules, that in his infancie
  Did paſh the iawes of Serpents venemous:
- c. 1602, 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 606515358, [Act II, scene iii]:
  I'll pash him o'er the face.
- 1855, Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”, XII:
  [...] 'tis a brute must walk / Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for pash in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)

Anagrams

HSAP, HSPA, PAHs, PHAs, Phas, SAHP, Shap, haps, hasp, pahs, psha