Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a general adj. of annoyance or irritation; lit. the use of a dash when printing damned adj.

1856		Sydney Morn. Herald 29 May 6/2: The duty of guard-mounting at St James’ was not disagreeable — far from it. To call the work ‘a dashed bore’ was [...] only a fashion of talking.
1861		(con. 1840s–50s) H. Mayhew London Labour and London Poor III 75/2: Says she, ‘Dicky Hall, then I’ll go too!’ / Says I, ‘Mrs. Hall. I’ll be dished [sic] if you do’.
1866		Elgin Courier 24 Aug. 7/3: Will nobody stop that — double-dashed — little barber’s clerk on the whitey-brown rocking horse? Hold hard!
1875		Cairo Bull. (IL) 24 Mar. 2/3: Can’t you see nothin’, you dash-dashed, aig-suckin’, sheep-stealin’, one-eyed son of a stuffed monkey!
1884		Sporting Times 22 Nov. 1/5: He couldn’t make out why those dashed fools were laughing.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 13 June 20/1: Arouse! Let pallid nations know, / And, knowing, let them quake, / You’ve gone into the butcher-trade, / No dashed-and-blanked mistake.
1890		Kipling ‘With the Main Guard’ in Soldiers Three (1907) 75: Bin to a bloomin’ sing-song, you two? [...] You’re over-merry for these dashed days.
1890		Sporting Times 8 Feb. 1/4: Well, strike me blanky blankity blank, I should be a blank, dash, blanky, blank if I didn’t.
1898		W.A. Sun. Times (Perth) 27 Feb. 3/1: Dash and blank the Exchange! [...] Dash it and blank it, and dash and blank you for a dashed and blanked idiot.
1902		Laurens Advertiser (SC) 15 Jan. 4/4: I’m going to knock the dashed thing flat.
1903		‘Dads Wayback’ in Sun. Times (Sydney) 21 June 5/3: ‘[T]her country wot you ain’t seen is allus a dashed sight better lookin’ than ther one yer in’.
1910		Marvel 5 Feb. 6: ‘Dashed cheek,’ said one of them irritably.
1916		‘Anzac’ On the Anzac Trail 164: [I]t’s a one-eyed kind of death to be drowned like rats in a trap. I’d a dashed sight rather be shot any day.
1915		R.P. Hamilton diary 3 July 🌐 He’s rather a dashed nuisance, and very selfish; still he does what he’s told, which is the main thing.
1926		Times Colonist (Victoria, BC) 17 July 28/7: ‘Of all the dashed, infernal, officious, meddling, muddling, fat-headed interfering asses’.
1930		N. Lindsay Redheap (1965) 175: ‘I had to carry that bally alligator up myself; the dashed thing weighs half a ton’.
1936		Bath Chron. 19 Dec. 24/1: ‘I’m dashed if I know what to do about it’.
1959		I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 192: If that’s your face it’s a dashed disgrace, I thought it was your bottom in the wrong place.
1961		‘Frank Richards’ Billy Bunter at Butlins 5: I’m jolly well not going to Uncle Carter’s for the hols, to wash his dashed dishes.