Mash

How to spell mash

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mash

What does mash mean?

1. verbTo crush or pound a food or soft material into a pulpy mixture.
2. nounA soft, pulpy food made by crushing, especially mashed potato served as a dish.

Mash in a sentence

• verb

  She likes to mash the boiled potatoes with butter and warm milk.

• noun

  The pub served sausages on a bed of creamy mash.

• verb

  You can mash the ripe banana with a fork before adding it to the batter.

• noun

  He piled a generous helping of buttery mash onto his plate.

Where does mash come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Mash comes from the Old English noun masc or max, which described the soft, pulpy mixture of crushed grain and hot water used in brewing beer and ale. That brewing sense is the oldest one in English, and it is related to similar words across the Germanic languages, including the German Maische, which still means the mash in beer making. From this base meaning of a soft, crushed mass, the verb sense developed: to mash something is to crush it until it becomes that kind of pulp. By the later medieval and early modern period the word had spread well beyond the brewery to cover any food or material pounded into a soft mixture, such as mashed vegetables or feed for animals. The spelling has stayed admirably simple and phonetic, which is why the main risk is not the letters themselves but confusing it in speech with words that share its short, blunt sound.

How the word is built

• mash (single Old English root meaning a soft pulpy mixture; no prefix or suffix)