smash n.1
1. as a mashed root vegetable [note 1960s+ Smash, brandname for instant mashed potatoes].
(a) mashed turnips.
| , , | ![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Smash. Leg of mutton and smash: a leg of mutton and mashed turnips. |
| Sporting Mag. Mar. XIII 360/2: A wager of a leg of mutton and smash. | |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 28 Nov. 349/3: The mutton and smash are boiling. | |
| Modern Flash Dict. 31: Smash, a thigh of mutton and, leg of mutton, turnips and capers. | |
| Flash Dict. in Sinks of London Laid Open [as cit. 1835]. |
(b) mashed potatoes.
| [ | | Paved with Gold 105: Give us some of your smashed taters]. |
| (con. 1840s–50s) London Labour and London Poor I 18/1: ‘A two-and-half plate, and a ha’p’orth of smash’ (a plate of soup and a ha’p’orth of mashed potatoes). | |
| Wild Boys of London I 216/1: I’d have four penn’orth o’ meat, half a plate o’ smash, ha’porth of greens. |
2. a heavy blow.
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 26 Sept. 5/2: Bill half inclined to go to work, yet dreading a smash from the Glazier. | |
| Dead Men’s Shoes II 267: By Jove, it was a thundering smash! | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Checkers 50: The piker made a smash at me. I dodged. | |
| Confessions of a Detective 31: I knew all about left-hooks, and right-hand smashes. |
3. bankruptcy, financial collapse.
| Eng. Spy II 129: In a smash at the hells have you been, / Where pigeons were pluck’d by the bone? | |
| Clockmaker II 198: There’s been an awful smash among the banks. | |
| Comic Almanack Dec. 202: The business I thought was to last for ever; but at the end of two years a smash came. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 4 Feb. 4/2: We once saw her [i.e. a ship] in Bristol but her Iron master made a smash [...] and she is now in new hands. | |
| Pendennis II 221: ‘Play much?’ asked Morgan. ‘Not since the smash.’. | |
| My Diary in America II 256: The grand hotel smash [...] sends all the noble, honourable, and gallant hotel-keepers into court under the Winding-up Act. | |
| Seamy Side III 226: He’s smashed [...] smash is the meaning of that letter. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 26 June 4/4: He was a younger son and was fast in a ratio inverse to his income. He ‘made a smash’ and applied to his elder brother, the Earl of — for assistance, which was denied him. | |
| Long Odds III 207: ‘[N]othing but Damocles winning the Derby can possibly avert our smash; there'll be nothing for it but to sell half the property [...] and go abroad. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 14 Jan. 5/3: The ‘smash’ left him without a coin. | |
| Temptress 10: May this smash bring me good luck in the future. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Mataura Ensign (NZ) 17 26 Apr. 5/1: And the bank of New Zealand was nearly a smash / When in steps Joe, and saves the crash. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 30 Sept. 5/5: But she couldn't fix it nohow — / Couldn't pull up any way — /The smash were comin’, safe and certain, / Close at hand the evil day. | |
| Blazed Trail 140: The firm’ll bust because she can’t pay; I’ll bust because I’ll have to let my stock go on margins – it’ll be an awful smash. | |
| Cool Customer 25: The bank is busted. I can salvage something out of the smash. | |
| Jimmy Brockett 55: I seen what happened after the bank smash in ’93, but anyone who works for a boss should have his bumps read. |
4. (UK Und., also smash job) a smash-and-grab raid; thus smashing, such a raid.
| ‘Her Muns with a Grin’ Swell!!! or, Slap-Up Chaunter 50: All moonshine to stash — is the young lightning’s flash / [...] / that is got by a smash, / At the vendor of vet. | |
| Sun (NY) 20 June 2/2: Off.—I heard you used to be a good Backsman. — Have you ‘Ogled a Dummy’ any where? Con.—Yes! a first rate one for a ‘smash,’ and pretty good on a ‘burst.’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Nov. 12/3: An old barn has done duty for several years as a place of worship, but lately some convicts broke into it and made such a universal smash that the place is now not good enough for a dog to pray in. | |
| Autobiog. of a Thief 82: The first ‘job’ I took part in was a ‘smash’ [...] Now, ‘smashing,’ crudely stated, consists of breaking a jeweller’s shop-window, seizing certain articles, usually previously decided upon, and then bolting. | |
| Gilt Kid 89: Damn great plate glass windows like the Army & Navy Stores. There were some decent furs in that window. Almost worth doing a smash there some day. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Letters from the Big House 81: Clean run all that time I had, at the smash. | |
| Boss of Britain’s Underworld 43: The best way to get a car for a smash job was to have a driving license in a false name. | |
| in Encounter n.d. in Norman’s London (1969) 60: Then I got a capture down to larking (nothing) when some grass (informer) told the law I had blown a peter (robbed a safe; blown open, with explosives), when it wasn’t me at all. And the other two I got for smashes (smash and grabs). |
5. in the context of alcohol.
(a) iced brandy and water, thus smasher, a measure of the mixture [abbr. SE brandy-smash].
| Wkly Rake (NY) 12 Nov. n.p.: They dart into a ‘three-cent rotgut’ shop [...] call for ‘smashers’ of brandy and water. | |
| Boston Blade 10 June n.p.: ‘Give us two brandy smashers, most all brandy and d — d few water!’. | |
| [ | | Doesticks Letters 309: Brandy-‘smashes,’ rum-punches, gin-cocktails, sherry-cobblers, mint-juleps, and every kind of desirable potable, are all manufactured from ‘Longworth’s Sparkling’]. |
| ‘Drinks and Drinking in Australia’ Town Talk 19 Mar. 547: A smash ... Ice, brandy, and water. | |
| ‘The Old Shipyard’ in Fred Shaw’s Champion Comic Melodist 58: If you want a smash, you must poney the cash. | |
 | ‘The Amer. Drinks’ in Comic Songs 13: There’s stone-fence, a rattlesnake, a renovator, locomotive [...] smashes, san-ga-rees, or else a corpse re-vi-ver. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Apr. 4/4: Brandy smashes — egg noggs — cock-tails — [...] are to be had half price at the Metropolitan Bar. | |
| Glow-Worm Tales III 20: I mean The Neverfailing Sodawater Cocktail; ‘Smashes’ and ‘Slings’ of all kinds. |
(b) (US black) wine.
![[Can]](/static/img/flags/can.png "Canada") | Maclean’s (Toronto) 15 Aug. 28/2: So I had a couple of smashes and marched in [OED]. | |
| Third Ear n.p.: smash n. wine. | |
| Runnin’ Down Some Lines 187: There are many vernacular terms for wine — the grapes, the berries, the vine [...] smash. |
6. (US, also eternal smash) a failure, a disaster; thus go (to) smash
| Oliver Twist (1966) 444: ‘This is a smash,’ observed Toby biting his lips. | |
| Aristocracy in America III iii 240: ‘General Jackson is popular [...]; so much so, that if a man were to say a word against him in the Western States, he would be “knocked into eternal smash”’. | |
| ‘Epistle from Joe Muggins’s Dog’ in Era (London) 17 Oct. 3/2: The oaf declared in my presence; that if he could find me hout [...] that he‘d ‘send me to heverlasting smash’. | |
| Collection of Letters (2005) 120: I have made an awful smash at the Literary Fund, and have tumbled into ’Evins knows where. | |
| College Words (rev. edn) 434: smash. [...] a total failure in reciting. | |
| Breezie Langton I 79: ‘Never mind raking up the story of the smash’. | |
| Sportsman (London) 14 Apr. 2/1: The very decided style of ‘smash’ adopted some of our American contemporaries is at least worthy of notice. | |
| West Point Scrap-Book 229: My ancient joy of ‘spoonying,’ / Is all knocked into smash. | |
| Illus. Sydney News 26 May 3/2: Yankee workmen of all kinds and degrees ‘lick all white men into immortal smash’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 2 May 10/2: Then turn to where the politician prates / Of Russian intrigues and the state of States; […] How Wolseley, Stewart, Graham – all are wrong, / And only need a corps seven hundred strong, / Filled to the ears with true colonial dash, / To send the Mahdi to immortal smash. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Mar. 24/4: We were expecting a smash, and got it. We will all be ‘copped’ like that some day if we are always to be under our own officers. [...] Some of them are only boys, who came out for a holiday, and we have to chance our lives with them. | |
| ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 60: smash, n. Failure in recitation. In expression ‘a dead smash’. | |
| Mr Standfast (1930) 692: ‘It was some smash,’ Blenkiron went on. ‘He was drummed out of the Guards, out of the clubs, out of the country.’. | |
| Of Love And Hunger 49: Remember that smash he had. With the coolies. |
7. (also smash-up) an argument.
| Wanderings of a Vagabond 287: ‘Air you specting ennybuddy’s goin ter make a smash, here?’ inquired Mr. Jones. | |
| ‘The Story of the Gadbsys’ in Soldiers Three (1907) 148: I wonder if smashes of this kind are always so raw. | |
| ‘Nearly Over’ in Top-Notch 15 Apr. 🌐 He had a grand smash-up with the superintendent and was promptly fired. |
8. a great success, a ‘smash hit’.
| [perf. Vesta Tilley] He’s going in for this dance now 🎵 Poor Timothy Blobbs was a gay little spark / [...] / Quite a smash with the girls. | |
| ‘Rhythm’ in Coll. Short Stories (1941) 347: I don’t claim it as my tune, but it was and is a smash. | |
| Daily Express 21 Sept. 9/3: The magnates who had contracted to buy the picture indulged in fits of doubt concerning its prospects as a box-office ‘smash’ [DA]. | |
| On Broadway 26 Apr. [synd. col.] Teddy Powell, whose song ‘Bewildered’ is a smash, has turned fickle again. | |
| On Broadway 15 Mar. [synd. col.] After her last smash, ‘The Philly Story,’ and her wow flicker, ‘Woman of the Year’, Katie [Hepburn] is becoming [etc.]. | |
| West Side Story I i: ANYBODYS Listen I was a smash in that fight. Oh, Riff, Riff, I was murder! | |
| Awopbop. (1970) 35: He’d already tucked about ten smashes under his belt by the time that Bill Haley came along. | |
| Of Minnie the Moocher and Me 108: Again we were a smash. | |
| Glitz 285: I was a smash [...] Vincent, they loved it. | |
| Guardian Friday Rev. 11 June 5: The sort of thing that would be a ratings smash. | |
| Indep. Rev. 30 Mar. 3: What a film executive wants to know is whether the film is going to be a smash or not. | |
| Unfaithful Music 232: Bruce [Thomas] [...] joined forces with the Sutherland Brothers, one of whom wrote Rod Stewar’s worldwide smash ‘Sailing’. | |
| (con. 1740s) Little History of US 251: The book went through one printing after another and was translated around the world—a best-selling smash in today's parlance. |
9. a glamorous social event.
| Coshocton (OH) Daily Times 26 Aug. 3/3: Are you going to have a regular knock-down-and-drag-out smash at St. George’s? |
10. (US) a time, a ‘go’, each.
| ‘His Own Stuff’ in Score by Innings (2004) 378: If a kid is born with the gambling bug in his system you can’t fine it out of him, not even at fifty a smash. | |
| ‘Mr. and Mrs. Fix-It’ in Coll. Short Stories (1941) 413: Ada kept the date and bought three dresses [...] They cost her three hundred dollars a smash. |
11. (Aus.) a violent, frightening man, usu. one who is drunk.
| DSUE (8th edn) 1099/1: since ca. 1910. |
12. (US) the end of a relationship.
| ‘The Whirling Hub’ in Afro-American (Baltimore, MD) 30 Mar. 15/1: Parental objection was the cause of the smash-up. |
13. (N.Z. prison) heroin.
| Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 170/2: smash n. heroin. |
In phrases
(also all to smash and nothing, into smash, all to shivers, to smash) a general intensifier, completely, comprehensively; often referring to defeat or destruction.
| Athenian Sport 374/1: Like good Soldiers very generously letting the Ship split all to shivers. | |
| Provoked Husband II i: Down goes the Coach! and Whang! says the Glasses, all to Shivers! | |
| Memoirs 50: He found his belly broken, and bowels torn, his hip-bone broken all to shivers, and the bullet lodged in it. | |
| Sporting Mag. Dec. IX 163/1: But an end to my cash, / And my fame goes all to smash. | |
| John Bull III ii: Our best china plate broke all to shivers! | |
| Chester Chron 30 Dec. 4/1: A Yankee malcontent [...] Sawing wood’s going all to smash . | |
| Nick of the Woods I 183: I banged the first of ’em all to smash. | |
| Stray Subjects (1848) 62: Magazine! Wal, that beats thunder all teu smash! | |
| Dict. Archaic and Provincial Words I 46/2: all-to-smash. Smashed to pieces [...] A Lancashire man, telling his master the mill-dam had burst, exclaimed, ‘Maister, maister, dam’s brossen, and aw’s-to-smash!’. | |
| Geelong Advertiser (Vic.) 21 Oct. 1/3: [S]uch talk was all ‘bounce,’ and that he (Mr W.) was a fool to her ‘cove,’ a chap who was able to beat him all to ‘smash and nothing’. | |
| Sth Aus. Register (Adelaide) 30 May 4/5: And so ends this odd love-tale, which, if genuine [...] beats the inventions of our most popular novelists all to smash. | |
| Adelaide Times 6 May 3/3: The paltry nincompoops refused the cash, / And, hence, the Captain’s scheme went all to smash. | |
| ‘Digging for Gould’ in Irish Songster 17: Mac, with a spade, knocked the crock into smash. | |
| N.Y. Clipper 24 Sept. 4/5: [T]he next tallest thing to its liberty-pole, is its court-house, which beats its big hotel all to smash. | |
| , | | Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. |
| New Rector x n.p.: There isn’t a fellow at school can match me, Miss Moore! I beat them all to smash! [F&H]. | |
| Tasmanian Punch (Hobart, Tas.) 4 Dec. 4/1: Look here mates—Blowed if it [i.e. a gold seam] don’t beat Victoriey all to smash! | |
| Sl. Dict. | |
| Hamilton Spectator (Vic.) 25 Oct. 1/6: ‘The mine's all gone to smash. The shares ain't worth a copper in the market’. | |
| Big Bonanza (1947) 204: ‘And what became of all this wealth?’ ‘Me burst all to smash!’. | |
| ‘The Showman’ in Comic Songs 22: The country bumpkins broke it all to smash. | |
| (con. c.1840) Huckleberry Finn 210: Sudden as winking the ornery old cretur went all to smash, and fell up against the man. | |
| Alexandra and Yea Standard (Vic.) 2 May 2/5: Broadford Shire Council is agin to the fore, as at its last meeting it licked the Yea Council all to smash. | |
| Eli Perkins: Thirty Years of Wit 285: She broke it all to smash. | |
| Fables of Field and Staff 51: I consigned business to total smash. | |
| Aus. Sl. Dict 4: All to Smash, gone insolvent; in liquidation. | |
| ‘Cape Cod Dialect’ in DN II:vi 423: all to smash, adv. Thoroughly. ‘We beat them all to smash.’. | |
| ‘Behind the Mask’ in Ten-Thousand-Dollar Arm 237: Joe Kerrigan, a veteran of long service, went all to smash. | |
| Dict. of Aus. Words And Terms 🌐 ALL TO SMASH — To be ruined. | |
| (con. 1920s) Hell’s Kitchen 208: Our schemes, however, went all to smash. |
(Aus.) to fall down.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 5 July 12/1: Seeing that she stood an excellent show of having her nose broken on the pavement, he stepped forward and offered his hand – which she abruptly declined. Then she jumped and came a perfect smash. |
(UK milt.) to become argumentative.
| ‘Army Slang’ in Regiment 11 Apr. 31/2: A private who is argumentative [...] is a ‘barrack room lawyer’ [...] and who, if the caution ‘not to give old smash’ or ‘back chat’ remain unheeded, will probably spend the night in the guard room. |
1. (also come to smash) to be ruined financially, to go bankrupt; used adverbially (see cit. 1913).
| Emerald (Boston, MA) II 369/2: Straddle [...] determined to do the thing genteelly, to go to smash like a hero, and dashed into the limits in high style, being the fifteenth gentleman 1 have known to drive tandem to the — ne plus ultra — the d—l. | |
| Era (London) 3 June 3/4: Don’t larf cos he’s been beaten to smash. | |
| Young Tom Hall (1926) 198: ‘You’re not goin’ smash, are ye?’ exclaimed the colonel [...] ‘No, not smash [...] not smash! [...] but there’s a redundancy of money’. | |
| Our Boys 235: In six months your government at Washington will go smash, and your green trash won’t be worth a snap. | |
| ‘Bobbing around!’ in Fred Shaw’s Champion Comic Melodist 19: And when you ask him for your cash [...] Says he: ‘Old boy, I’ve gone to smash’. | |
| Wkly Kansas Chief (Troy, KS) 26 Dec. 1/3: I’ll give you a week [...] to see the whole concern go to everlasting smash. | |
| Dagonet Ballads 82: Thirty poun’ had gone smash in a minit—we’d borrowed a portion o’ that. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Mar. 7/1: The illustrious Baron went smash a good while since, and was sold up. | |
| Narranghi Boori ‘The English Ne-er-do-well’ in (1967–9) I 445: Unlike some Sydney Johnnies who have come to sudden smash, / And will loaf about the city where they used to cut a dash. | |
| [perf. Vesta Tilley] The Oofless Duke 🎵 So girls buck up and save a titled Johnny going smas. | |
| [perf. Marie Lloyd] Everything in the Garden’s Lovely 🎵 They want sixteen million cash / Else the China goes to smash. | |
| Commoner (Lincoln, NE) 19 Feb. 10/2: I met a feller th’ other day / Who said th’ world was goin’ t’ smash. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 17 Nov. 11/3: An 18-carat insolvent turned up at Euchaca (Vic.) last week. He had gone smash away back in 1902 over a carting venture. | |
| Valley of the Moon (1914) 205: Pretty soon I go smash broke maybe. | |
| Shorty McCabe on the Job 7: Our corner went to smash. I was cleaned out. | |
| ‘Mamie’ in Complete Poems I (1950) 17: Chicago where maybe there is / romance / and big things / and real dreams / that never go smash. | |
| ‘One Day Awake’ in Chap Book Dec. 15: You’ll go smash, of course. | |
| Chicago May (1929) 25: The landlady and her pimp came in and saw their business going to smash. | |
| New Call (Perth, WA) 6 July 1/3: ‘Then the cafe went smash and we all lost our jobs’. | |
| Tropic of Cancer (1963) 82: For the last five years [...] he hasn’t done a stroke of work, hasn’t turned over a penny. Business has gone to smash. | |
| Pig and Pepper (1990) 32: He had a business in Warsaw and went smash. | |
| 1 Jan. diary in Garfield Our Hidden Lives (2004) 162: I came across [a] Rudyard Kipling signature on one of his cheques in the New Oriental Bank which went Smash. | |
| It (1987) 509: Two limo companies a week go smash in the Big Apple. |
2. (also go to smashes) to blunder, to err, to fail.
| The Fudge Family in Paris Letter VIII 79: Old Donaldson’s mending my stays – / Which I knew would go smash with me one of these days. | |
| Col. Crockett’s Tour to North and Down East 225: The old gineral thinks as iph he lays down ‘his government,’ it’ll all go to smashes; and rather than hurt us all, he’ll agree to hang on for third heat. | |
| Silas Marner 53: If you don’t, you know, everything ’ll go to smash. | |
| in House Scraps 151: The first, the champion of ‘the vast Wabash,’ / Makes millions when his railroads ‘go to smash’. | |
| ‘Word-List From Western New York’ in DN III:vi 436: all gone to smash, adj. phr. Completely ruined; smashed to pieces ‘The old wheelbarrow’s all gone to smash.’. | |
| ‘Behind the Mask’ in Ten-Thousand-Dollar Arm 235: Every spring they expected to see ‘the old man’ go to smash on balls and strikes, the crucial test for aged eyes. | |
| Valley of the Moon (1914) 413: And democracy gone clean to smash. |
3. to ruin one’s life; to die; in weaker sense, to be ruined (see cite 1846).
| Portage Sentinel (Ravenna, OH) 7 Jan. 1/1: A pair of new boots all gone to eternal smash. | |
| ‘Bobbing around!’ in Fred Shaw’s Champion Comic Melodist 19: Old boy, I’ve gone to smash, / ’Cause I went bobbing around. | |
| Moko Marionettes 5: My two babes – gone to smash! | |
| Chillicothe (MO) Constitution 11 Jan. 3/2: Do you realize what you’re doing? Don’t go to smash, Dick. Just at the beginning of your life. | |
| ‘Sporting Doctor’ in Taking the Count 33: He’s too fine a piece of machinery to be allowed to go to smash. | |
| Drawing Dead [ebook] The world had gone to smash. |
(UK black) wholly under control.
| ‘Man’ 🎵 Now all my white niggas and my black mates, we got the game on smash. | |
| What They Was 127: I swear I got that swordplay shit on smash. |
(Aus.) on a spree.
| Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 4 Sept. 3/3: A pound a day [...] / It are a lot of cash, / For them as never had a bean / To go out on the smash. |
to cause trouble for, to ‘play hell with’.
| S.F. Call in Barbary Coast (1933) n.p.: How shocked they would be could they see them as they sit there now, ‘playing particular smash,’ as they are pleased to term it, with the feminine attaches of the Bella Union. | |
| Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY) 17 Jan. 1/7: [caption] Plays Smash With a Passenger Train on the Fitchburg Railroad [DA]. | |
| Abner Daniel 43: You young bloods are a-goin’ to play smash with the gals’ hearts to-night, I reckon. | |
| ‘Word-List From Western Indiana’ in DN III:viii 585: play smash, v. A euphemism for play hell or play the devil. |