Other forms: quashed, quashing, quashes
To quash is to put down a rebellion, or to set a verdict aside. Quash the rebellion, quash the conviction, quash the rumour.
The legal sense is the technical one: a court quashing a conviction wipes it out entirely, as against reducing a sentence. It is a different word from squash, though the sound has pulled them together.
1verbquashTo put down a rebellion, or to set a verdict aside.
“The army was sent in to quash the rebellion in the north.”
quash is a suppressing.
Old French quasser comes from Latin quassare, to shatter, influenced by cassare, to annul.
Middle English
quaschen
English, today
quash
Built from
From Middle English quaschen. From Middle English quaschen, quasshen, cwessen, quassen, from Old French quasser, from Latin quassō, under the influence of cassō (“to annul”), from Latin quatiō (“to shake”) Cognate with Dutch kwetsen (“to hurt, injure”), German quetschen (“to crush, squash”), Spanish quejar (“to complain”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA