Other forms: squished, squishing
To squish is to squeeze something soft with a wet sound. Squish it flat, squished in the bag, a squishy texture.
It is informal and the sound is half the word. Squishy describes anything soft that gives under pressure, and it is used approvingly of cushions and disapprovingly of fruit. Squished also means crammed into too small a space: squished in the back. Note that squish is an alteration of squash, made under the influence of an old verb squiss meaning to squeeze.
1verbsquishTo squeeze something soft with a wet sound.
“The tomatoes got squished at the bottom of the shopping bag.”
2verbcramTo cram into too small a space.
“We squished five people into the back of the tiny car.”
squish is a soft squeezing.
Squish is an alteration of squash, influenced by the obsolete verb squiss, to squeeze. The whole family sounds like what it does.
Built from
Apparently an alteration of squash, influenced by obsolete squiss (“to squeeze”). Cognate with Scots squische, squies (“to crush, squeeze”). Compare also French esquicher, from Old Occitan esquichar (“to squeeze, squish”). See also squeeze and squelch. The noun is derived from the verb. The linguistic continuum or progression was coined in 1972 by the American poet and linguist John R. Ross (1938–2025): see the quotation. non-romantic infatuation was formed by analogy with crush#Noun and possibly smash, both of which have senses as types of compression as well as types of attraction. It was possibly first attested in 1999 (see the quotation) and then later coined or recoined in 2007 by the user Raisin on the forums of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network as "a milder synonym for the word 'crush'". The term was also used with a similar meaning in a 1997 episode of the TV show Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, though the 2007 coining or recoining was apparently independent.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA