gash
pronunciation
How to pronounce gash in British English:
UK [ɡæʃ]
How to pronounce gash in American English:
US [ɡæʃ]
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- Noun:
- a wound made by cutting
- a trench resembling a furrow that was made by erosion or excavation
- a strong sweeping cut made with a sharp instrument
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- Verb:
- cut open
Word Origin
- gash
- gash: [16] Greek kharássein meant ‘sharpen, engrave, cut’ (it gave English character). It was borrowed into Latin as charaxāre, which appears to have found its way into Old Northern French as garser ‘cut, slash’. English took this over as garse, which survived, mainly as a surgical term meaning ‘make incisions’, into the 17th century. An intermediate form garsh, recorded in the 16th century, suggests that this was the source of modern English gash.=> character
- gash (v.)
- 1560s, alteration of older garsh, from Middle English garsen (late 14c.), from Old North French garser "to cut, slash" (see gash (n.)). For loss of -r-, see ass (n.2). Related: Gashed; gashing.
- gash (n.)
- 1540s, alteration of Middle English garce "a gash, cut, wound, incision" (early 13c.), from Old North French garser "to scarify, cut, slash" (Old French *garse), apparently from Vulgar Latin *charassare, from Greek kharassein "engrave, sharpen, carve, cut," from PIE *gher- (4) "to scrape, scratch" (see character). Loss of -r- is characteristic (see ass (n.2)). Slang use for "vulva" dates to mid-1700s. Provincial English has a set of words (gashly, gashful, etc.) with forms from gash but senses from gast- "dreadful, frightful."
Synonym
Example
- 1. The only injury I saw was a bloody gash on its brow .
- 2. That gash is weeping badly .
- 3. He had a gash to his head but no broken bones or ruptured internal organs .
- 4. But it 's very possible that construction of the hull did not assume that rocks could inflict a gash 160 feet long .
- 5. The dragon watched the blood dripping from the gash in his paw .