Other forms: hashes
In computing, a hash is a short fingerprint calculated from a piece of data. A hash function, check the hash, hash the password.
The same input always gives the same hash, and changing anything at all gives a completely different one — which is why hashes are used to check files and to store passwords. A good hash cannot be reversed. Elsewhere, hash is a dish of chopped meat and potato; the hash symbol is the one on a phone keypad; hashtag comes from it; and make a hash of something means to do it badly.
1nounhashA short fingerprint calculated from data.
“The hash did not match and the whole download was thrown away.”
2noundishA dish of chopped meat and potato.
“For breakfast, he fried up a hash of leftover beef and potatoes with an egg on top.”
hash is a chopped or mixed thing.
French hacher means to chop, from hache, an axe — the same root as hatchet. The food is chopped, the symbol is a set of crossing cuts, and the computing sense is data chopped up and mixed.
Old French
hacher
Middle French
hacher
French
hacher — to chop
English, today
hash
From French hacher (“to chop”), from Middle French hacher, from Old French hacher, from Old French hache (“axe”), from Frankish happjā (“axe”). Compare also ġehæċċa.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA