Slash

How to spell slash

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce slash

What does slash mean?

1. verbTo cut something with a violent sweeping stroke, or to reduce a figure sharply.
2. nounA cutting stroke or wound, or the diagonal punctuation mark written as a forward stroke.

Slash in a sentence

• verb

  The new manager plans to slash the marketing budget in half.

• noun

  She left a slash between the two options on the form.

• verb

  Vandals tried to slash the tyres of every car on the street.

• noun

  The painting bore a deep slash across the canvas.

Where does slash come from?

Language of origin: French

The verb slash appears in Middle English around the late 1300s, meaning to strike with sweeping cutting blows. Its exact source is genuinely uncertain, which is unusual for so common a word. Many scholars connect it to the Old French verb esclachier, meaning to break or to smash to pieces, and the imitative quality of the word may have helped it survive: the sharp opening 'sl' and hissing 'sh' seem to echo the sound of a blade cutting through air. By the 1500s it had broadened from sword strokes to any violent cutting, and by the twentieth century it picked up the figurative business sense of cutting prices or budgets sharply. The name for the punctuation mark, the forward slash, is a much later development that simply describes the diagonal cutting stroke of the line.

How the word is built

• slash (a single inseparable root; no prefix or suffix)