Other forms: slashed, slashing, slashes
To slash is to cut violently with a sweeping stroke. Slash the tyres, slashed the canvas, slash at it.
It is a wide cut rather than a stab. Figuratively, to slash is to cut something drastically: slash prices, slash the budget, slash jobs — and it is the standard headline verb for any large reduction. As a noun, a slash is both the cut and the punctuation mark, the oblique stroke used in dates and web addresses. Note backslash, which leans the other way and belongs to file paths.
1verbslashTo cut violently with a sweeping stroke.
“Vandals slashed the tyres of several cars on our street.”
2verbdrasticallyTo cut something drastically.
“The budget was slashed by roughly a third.”
slash is a sweeping cut.
Old French esclachier meant to break in pieces, probably from a Frankish word meaning to slit or tear. The word arrived describing violence and reached price tags by way of headlines.
Frankish
*slītan — to slit, tear
Old French
esclachier — to break in pieces
English, today
slash
Late Middle English -, originally a verb of uncertain etymology. Perhaps of imitative of the sound origin, or possibly from Old French esclachier (“to break in pieces”), a variant of esclater, which is likely a gem - borrowing, from Frankish slītan (“to slit, tear”). Used in the Wycliffe Bible as slascht (see 1 Kings 5:18) but otherwise unattested until 16th century. Conjunctive use from various applications of the punctuation mark ⟨/⟩. See also slash fiction.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Cutting & Breaking