Other forms: lashes, lashed, lashing
To lash is to hit hard with something long and thin — a whip, a rope, a cane. It is also what rain does to a window: rain lashed the glass all night and nobody slept.
The uses look unrelated until you see the strap behind all of them. You lash a person with a whip; you lash a thing down with rope, tying it so tight it cannot shift (they lashed the ladder to the roof rack); and lashes on their own are eyelashes, which is the sense in every mascara advert. Lash out is the phrasal verb to know: to hit suddenly, or, just as commonly, to attack with words — he lashed out at reporters outside the court. The noun lash is one stroke of a whip, and a tongue-lashing is a fierce telling-off.
1verblashTo hit someone or something hard with a whip or a rope.
“In the story the prisoner is lashed twenty times.”
2verbrainOf rain, wind or waves: to beat hard against something.
“Rain lashed the tent from midnight until dawn.”
3verbtieTo tie something firmly in place with rope.
“They lashed the boat to the jetty and ran for cover.”
4nounstrokeA stroke with a whip, or the flexible end of a whip.
“He felt the lash across his shoulders.”
5nounshortOne of the short hairs growing along the edge of the eyelid.
“She blinked, and a lash fell onto her cheek.”
Middle English lashe meant a stroke, and also the flexible end of a whip. Behind it stands Proto-Germanic *laskô, a flap of fabric or a strap, still visible in German Lasche, a flap or tongue of leather, and in Icelandic laski, the bottom part of a glove. Strap, whip-end, eyelid hair: the word has stuck with thin flexible things the whole way.
Proto-Germanic
*laskô — flap of fabric, strap
Middle English
lashe
English, today
lash
Built from
From Middle English lashe, lasshe, lasche (“a stroke; the flexible end of a whip”), from Proto-Germanic laskô (“flap of fabric, strap”).Cognate with Dutch lasch, las (“a piece; seal; joint; notch; seam”), German Low German Laske, Lask (“a flap; dag; strap”), German Lasche (“a flap; joint; strap; tongue; scarf”), Swedish lask (“scarf”), Icelandic laski (“the bottom part of a glove”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA