squishy

English

Alternative forms

• squishie (noun)

Etymology

From squish +‎ -y.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈskwɪʃi/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• Audio (US):

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• Rhymes: -ɪʃi

Adjective

squishy (comparative squishier or more squishy, superlative squishiest or most squishy)

1. (literally, of a physical material) Yielding easily to pressure; very soft.
   • 2015, Andrea Chesman, The Backyard Homestead Book of Kitchen Know-How:

     Bread is either cheap (soft, squishy supermarket loaves) or expensive (artisan bakery loaves).

   1. (especially) Soft and wet.
      • 2009, Jamie Carie, Wind Dancer, B&H Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 144:

        Finished with head and hair, the women pulled her up the bank to wash her body, the soft squishy mud registering for the first time on the outer consciousness of Isabelle’s mind.

2. (figuratively)
   1. Subjective or vague.
      • April 14 2022, Delia Cai, “Severance, the New York Times’s Twitter Guidelines, and the Forever Illusion of Work-Life Balance”, in Vanity Fair‎^[1]:

        How does the media love Twitter? Let us count the ways: as a tech platform practically indispensable to the work of newsgathering; as a metrics system designating clear numerical value to once-squishy concepts of popularity and esteem; as a gossip-fueled lunchroom of the elites more or less available for public participation; as an arena for duking out industry controversies ranging from #MeToo to opinions about opinion pages.

   2. (politics, colloquial, derogatory) Politically moderate.
3. Making a squish sound.
   • 2004, Intelligent Systems, translated by Nintendo of America, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Nintendo, GameCube, level/area: Boggly Woods:

     Those darling, squishy little footsteps...Is that you, Punio?

4. (gaming) Vulnerable to physical damage; having low hit points or defense.

   Antonym: tanky

   • 2006, Marianne Mancusi, Stake That!‎^[2], page 28:

     Yeah, I’m, like, freaking tissue paper here. Come get the mage, everyone. Pick on the poor squishy mage!

   • 2008, Jeon Rezvani, Guild Leadership: Lessons from the Virtual World‎^[3], page 111:

     Telling your healers how well they kept people alive when a battle was difficult is important; or, what a great job your thief did in disarming the traps to get to the raid; clapping your warriors on their backs for maintaining aggro (i.e., keeping the monster targeting them rather than “squishy” mages) or applauding the sorcerers who unloaded incredible amounts of damage.

   • 2022, Keith Ammann, MOAR!: Monsters Know What They're Doing‎^[4], page 89:

     What this tells us is that, against PCs equipped to confront a drow shadowblade, a single round's Multiattack is unlikely to deliver a one-hit kill – not unless the target is a squishy wizard or sorcerer.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:squishy.

Derived terms

• squishily
• squishiness

Translations

(of an object or substance) yielding easily to pressure; very soft; especially, soft and wet, as mud

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 濕軟 / 湿软 (shīruǎn)

• Czech: blátivý, naměklý, měkký (cs)
• Danish: please add this translation if you can
• Finnish: vetelä (fi), lötkö (fi), löysä (fi), veltto (fi)
• French: mou (fr), spongieux (fr), visqueux (fr)
• German: weichlich, nachgebend (de), watschig, pratschig, matschig (de), schwabbelig (de)
• Maori: tāhōhō, tāromiromi
• Portuguese: mole (pt), macio (pt)
• Russian: пода́тливый (ru) (podátlivyj)
• Spanish: blando (es) m, fofo (es) m, esponjoso (es) m, bofo (es) m, fungoso m
• Swedish: geggig

Noun

squishy (plural squishies)

1. (colloquial) A squeezable stress reliever, especially one made of foam.
2. (slang) A term of endearment. (Can we add an example for this sense?)