pash

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pæʃ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æʃ

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

Etymology 1

Clipping of passion.

Verb

pash (third-person singular simple present pashes, present participle pashing, simple past and past participle pashed)

1. (Australia, New Zealand, slang) To snog, to make out, to kiss.
   • 2003, Andrew Daddo, You’re Dropped!‎^[1], →ISBN:

     ‘You gonna pash her?’
     ‘We only just started going together,’ I said. Pash her? Already? I hadn’t even kissed a girl properly yet.
     ‘Do you know how to pash?’ It sounded like a challenge. Jed Wall was a bit like that. When he wasn’t just hanging he was fighting or pashing or something that no one else was good at.

   • 2005, Gabrielle Morrissey, Urge: Hot Secrets For Great Sex, HarperCollins Publishers (Australia), unnumbered page,

     There are hundreds of different types of kisses; and there are kissing Kamasutras available in bookshops to help you add variety to your pashing repertoire.

   • 2023 January 31, Clem Bastow, “My bad trip – I met a handsome Scot with a crossword and thought it was true love”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     A few hours later, having pashed near the bins outside a supermarket, I stumbled towards my tube station certain I had met the love of my life.

Noun

pash (plural pashes)

1. (Australia, New Zealand) A passionate kiss.
   • 2003, Frances Whiting, Oh to Be a Marching Girl, page 18:

     Anyway, the point is, my first pash — or snog, or whatever you want to call it — was so bloody awful it’s a miracle I ever opened my mouth again.

2. A romantic infatuation; a crush.
   • 1988, Catherine Cookson, “Bill Bailey’s Daughter”, in Bill Bailey: An Omnibus, published 1997, page 166:

     ‘It isn’t a pash. Nancy Burke’s got a pash on Mr Richards and Mary Parkin has a pash on Miss Taylor, and so have other girls. But I haven’t got a pash on Rupert. It isn’t like that. I know it isn’t. I know it isn’t.’

   • 2002, Thelma Ruck Keene, The Handkerchief Drawer: An Autobiography in Three Parts, page 92:

     Not until the outcome of Denise’s pash did I admit that my pash on Joan had been very different.

   • 2010, Gwyneth Daniel, A Suitable Distance, page 82:

     At school it was called a pash. Having a pash on big handsome Robin, who used to cycle up to the village in his holidays from boarding school, and smile at her. She still had a pash on Robin. He still smiled at her.

3. The object of a romantic infatuation; a crush.
4. Any obsession or passion.

Synonyms

• (kiss): snog (UK)

Derived terms

• pash rash

Etymology 2

Scots word for the pate, or head.

Noun

pash (plural pashes)

1. (obsolete) The head.
   • c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:

     Leo[ntes]: Thou want′ſt a rough paſh, & the shoots that I haue, / To be full like me:

Etymology 3

Probably of imitative origin, or possibly akin to box (“to fight with the fists”).

Verb

pash (third-person singular simple present pashes, present participle pashing, simple past and past participle pashed)

1. (dialect) To throw (or be thrown) and break.
2. To strike; to crush; to bash; to break into pieces.
   • c. 1587–1588, [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire, London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:

     Hercules, that in his infancie
     Did paſh the iawes of Serpents venemous:

   • c. 1602, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene iii]:

     I'll pash him o'er the face.

   • 1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section XII:

     [...] 'tis a brute must walk / Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

See also

• pish pash (etymologically unrelated)

Anagrams

• HAPs, psha, Shap, Saph, Phas, ASHP, PAHs, haps, HSAP, hasp, PHAs, SAHP, HSPA, pahs