▪ I. hash, v.
(hæʃ)
Also 7 hache.
[a. F. hache-r, f. hache hatchet: see hache.]
1. trans. To cut (meat) into small pieces for cooking; to make into a hash.
| 1657 R. Ligon Barbadoes (1673) 34, I gave them some tastes of my Cookery, in hashing, and fricasing this flesh. 1725 Bradley Fam. Dict. s.v. Mushroom, You must hash a Piece of Veal or Fowl. 1727 W. Mather Yng. Man's Comp. 28 Hash, to mince Meat. 1853 A. Soyer Pantroph. 136 Meat hashed small and well peppered. |
2. fig. Also
hash over,
hash up.
| 1742 Pope Dunc. iv. 231 Be sure I give them Fragments, not a Meal; What Gellius or Stobæus hash'd before, Or chew'd by blind old Scholiasts o'er and o'er. 1794 Mathias Purs. Lit. (1798) 385 His own stale scraps..Hash'd up and season'd with an old man's spleen. 1880 Academy 25 Sept. 219 Pleased at seeing his waifs and strays of thought thus hashed up. 1920 F. S. Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise (1921) iv. 129 The things..they had hashed and rehashed for many a frugal conversational meal. 1931 Loeb & Schenker Please stand By i. iv. 45 But drop up anyway, I have something I want to hash over with you. 1950 New Yorker 16 Dec. 26/1 Asked him in to hash over a point or two. 1958 Times Lit. Suppl. 5 Sept. 493/3 It is the classic film formula, the sort of thing that dead-beat script⁓writers hash up for B. pictures. |
3. To cut up, to slash or hack about; to mangle. Also
fig. Now
Sc. and
dial. Also
intr.| 1663 Butler Hud. i. iii. 838 He..rain'd a storm Of blows so terrible and thick, As if he meant to hash her quick. 1727 Walker Peden's Life in Biogr. Scot. 489 (Jam.) They are hagging and hashing them down, and their blood is running down like water. 1829 Scott Jrnl. 10 Feb., Hashed and smashed as my time is, who can make anything of it? 1893 Stevenson Catriona 165 A hand in hagging and hashing at Christ's Kirk. |
Hence
hashed (
hæʃt)
ppl. a.,
ˈhashing vbl. n.;
ˈhasher, one who hashes or makes a hash; also
U.S. slang, a waiter or waitress in a restaurant;
ˈhashery U.S. slang, a hash-house, a cheap eating-house.
| 17.. Battle Sheriff Muir 1715 in Child Ballads (1864) VII. 159 There was such hashing, and broad swords a-clashing. 1768–74 Tucker Lt. Nat. (1852) II. 648 The cuttings, the roastings, and hashings they undergo. a 1845 Hood Clubs iii, The Cook's a hasher—nothing more. 1870 Alaska Times (Sitka) 8 Jan. 1/3 Having lately opened a hashery, I send you this my rules and regulations. 1901 Munsey's Mag. XXIV. 568/2 The salary was ten times what she was getting at the hashery. 1916 A. B. Dunn in Editor 11 Mar. 297/2 Hasher, meaning waitress. 1957 J. Kerouac On Road (1958) 172 Her honest labors in the hashery. 1960 Listener 18 Aug. 250/2 When it came to making an impression on the ‘hashers’ in the railroad ‘beaneries’, the boomers really let themselves go... The ‘hashers’ were girls chosen for their looks. 1961 Amer. Speech XXXVI. 271 Somewhere on your run you will spend some time at a truck stop..while the hasher serves your diesel. |
Add:
4. Computing. To obtain a number from (a string of bytes) by applying an arithmetical algorithm to it, disregarding the significance of the string;
esp. to transform (a record key) into a number by this technique. Also
absol. See *hashing
vbl. n. 2.
| 1968 Computer Bull. XI. 299/2 It would not be economical to re-hash until it is fairly certain either that the present table will overflow or that it is becoming inefficient. 1971 Proc. AFIPS Conf. XXXVIII. 214/2 The user's name is now passed to the host. The host hashes the name into the LUD (local user directory) to find the user's file directory, billing account, and so on. 1972 Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery XV. 302/1 One must first access the list of keys for each track.., then hash to the location of each data record. 1977 Sci. Amer. Apr. 71/3 The idea is to treat the letters of words as if they were numbers (a = 1, b = 2, c = 3 and so on through z = 26) and then to hash, or scramble, the numbers in some way in order to get a single number for each word. 1983 Your Computer Sept. 44/3 When each word is obtained from your text file for comparison, it is hashed using the same seven algorithms, and the seven memory locations are checked. |
hashed ppl. a. (examples in sense *4 of the
vb.).
| 1971 Proc. AFIPS Conf. XXXVIII. 559/2 A hashed addressing scheme..will translate the query directly into the address of the answer. 1983 A. J. & B. D. Tebby tr. W. End's Software Devel. iii. 95 With hashed storage there is an algorithm relating the record code to the corresponding record address. |
[
f. hash v. +
-ing1.] Add:
2. Computing. The application of an algorithm to a string of bytes without regard to the significance of the string; the use of this procedure as a way of generating addresses that are likely to be relatively evenly distributed and, being deducible from the parent string, make for rapid look-up of records. Freq.
attrib.| 1967 H. Hellerman Digital Computer Syst. Princ. iii. 152 Another hashing technique uses the nearest prime number p smaller than n. The transformation is the residue of x modulo p, that is, divide x by p and keep only the remainder. 1970 Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery XIII. 427/1 The methods..involve trees whose structure is defined by a hashing function. 1977 Sci. Amer. Apr. 71/3 There is actually a much better way to search through a large collection of words by computer. It is called hashing, and it is a completely different approach that is quite unsuitable for human use because it is based on a machine's ability to do arithmetic at high speeds. 1983 Austral. Microcomputer Mag. Oct. 18/3 The net result of a good hashing algorithm is that with our example..the amount of core actually used would only be something like 20 cells. 1989 H. Alshawi et al. in Boguraev & Briscoe Computational Lexicogr. ii. 50 The access method relies on a precompiled, multilevel indexing structure which allows direct hashing into the on-line source. |
▪ II. hash, n.1 (
hæʃ)
Also 7
hache.
[f. hash v., taking the place of the earlier haché, hachee, hachey, hachy, and hachis, from French.] 1. Something cut up into small pieces;
spec. a dish consisting of meat which has been previously cooked, cut small, and warmed up with gravy and sauce or other flavouring.
| 1662–3 Pepys Diary 13 Jan., I had..at first course, a hash of rabbits, a lamb. 1678 R. L'Estrange Seneca's Mor. (1702) 510 They are only Hache, made up of the Fragments that remain'd. 1709 Addison Tatler No. 148 ¶9, I..passed my Eye over several Hashes, which I do not know the Names of. 1796 H. Glasse Cookery v. 47 Lay..thin sippets round the dish, and pour in your hash. 1863 E. Acton Mod. Cookery 205 If the meat in a hash or mince be allowed to boil, it will immediately become hard. |
2. transf. and
fig. Old matter ‘served up’ or presented in a fresh form; now often coloured by or associated with 3.
| 1672–3 Marvell Reh. Transp. II. 368 To serve up to the Reader continually the cold Hashes of plain repetition. 1759 Goldsm. Polite Learn. x, Old pieces are revived..the public are again obliged to ruminate over those hashes of absurdity. 1860 Darwin in Life & Lett. (1887) II. 319 Chiefly a well-done hash of my own words. |
3. a. A mixture of mangled and incongruous fragments; a medley; a spoiled mixture; a mess, jumble. Often in
phr. to make a hash of, to mangle and spoil in attempting to deal with.
| 1735 Pope Donne Sat. iv. 52 The Hash of tongues A Pedant makes. 1747 H. Walpole Lett. H. Mann 23 Feb. (1833) II. 274 (Farmer) About as like it, as my Lady Pomfret's hash of plural persons and singular verbs or infinitive moods was to Italian. 1833 J. H. Newman Lett. (1891) I. 459 Froude writes up to me we have made a hash of it. 1847 Ld. Houghton in Life (1891) I. ix. 402 Lord Grey has made somewhat of a hash of New Zealand and its constitution. 1868 Freeman Norm Conq. II. App. 595 They there⁓fore make a strange hash of the story. |
b. Phr.
to settle (a person's) hash: to reduce to order; to silence, subdue; to make an end of, ‘do for’.
slang or
colloq.| 1803 I. Cruikshank Olympic Games 16 June (caption), I think the first round will settle his hash. 1807 Massachusetts Spy 14 Oct. 4/1 This settles all the hash. 1809 T. G. Fessenden Pills Poetical 114 We therefore mean to make a dash, To settle fighting Europe's hash. 1822 [see settle v. 21 b]. a 1825 Song in Brockett s.v., The hash of the Yankees he'll settle. 1849 E. E. Napier Excurs. S. Africa II. 389 My finger was in an instant on the trigger, and another second would have settled his hash. 1864 Browning Youth & Art xiv, You've to settle yet Gibson's hash. 1930 R. H. Mottram Europa's Beast xii. 292 He's settled my hash, right enough. 1933 C. St. J. Sprigg Fatality in Fleet St. x. 124 What are you going to do? Settle his hash and drop him overboard? |
4. A term of obloquy, applied to a person who ‘makes a hash’ of his words, etc.
Sc.| 1655 in Brockett N.C. Gloss. (1846) I. 211 [In 1655, Henry Hedley was fined 3s. 4d. for calling William Johnson, one of the stewards of the Company of Bricklayers and Plasterers] ‘a slavering hash’. 1722–30 Ramsay Fables i, Twa Books, I canna thole the clash, Of this impertinent auld hash. 1785 Burns Ep. Lapraik xii, A set o' dull, conceited hashes. 1816 Scott Old Mort. xxviii, ‘What was I wanting to say..to his honour himsell..ye muckle hash?’ |
5. A trade name for waste paper of the lowest quality.
| 1893 Westm. Gaz. 4 July 5/3 ‘Hash’, the paper of lowest marketable value, can be collected and sorted without loss. |
6. attrib., as
hash-dish,
hash-meat;
hash browns chiefly
U.S.,
= hashed brown potatoes s.v. hashed ppl. a. b; more fully,
hash-brown(ed) potatoes;
hash-house chiefly
U.S. colloq., a cheap eating-house, boarding house, etc.; also
attrib.;
hash-joint U.S. slang = hash-house;
hash-mark U.S. slang, a military service stripe;
hash sign [
cf. hash-mark:
prob. ult. f. hatch v.
2, altered by popular etymology], the symbol {hash},
esp. used before a numeral (as in N.
Amer.) to indicate a following number; the ‘number sign’;
hash-slinger U.S. slang, a waiter or waitress;
hash-up slang, a hastily cooked meal; also
fig., something concocted afresh from existing material; a reworking.
| 1917 I. C. B. Allen Mrs. Allen's Cook Bk. 400 *Hash Browned Potatoes. 1948 H. L. Mencken Amer. Lang. Suppl. II. 388 Of late there has been a strong tendency..to omit the -ed ending... Examples: mash potatoes, hash-brown potatoes, [etc.]. 1969 Drive-In & Carry-Out July 16 (Advt.), Choose either regular or crinkle cut french fries..and shoestring as well as hash browns. 1973 M. Davis Potato Bk. 20/1 Fry..uncovered. Turn with a spatula to brown both sides. These are known variously as ‘cottage fries’, ‘home fries’ or ‘hash browned’ potatoes. 1975 J. Lehrer We were Dreamers vii. 109 I had..a whopping serving of Mrs. King's hash browns. 1979 United States 1980/81 (Penguin Travel Guides) 336 Hash-brown potatoes and salads are specialties. 1986 R. Brandon Left, Right & Centre xxi. 119 Taggart ordered eggs, bacon and hash browns. |
| 1869 Territorial Enterprise (Virginia, Nev.) 21 Sept. 3/1 The Mayor proposes to double the tax on all ‘*hash houses’. 1875 Scribner's Monthly July 277/1 In the slang vernacular, an eating place is a ‘hash house’. 1883 Daily Tel. 10 Jan. 5/4 (Farmer), Fifteen-cent restaurants, commonly called hash-houses. 1895 W. C. Gore in Inlander Dec. 116 Hash-house, boarding house. 1897 Outing (U.S.) XXX. 362/1 It has its swell hotels..and its ‘hash-houses’. 1900 H. Lawson On Track in Prose Wks. (1948) 223 Fourpenny hash-houses (good beds, 6d.). 1903 A. H. Lewis Boss xx. 273 His is this deadfall on Barclay Street, with that hash-house keeper to give him th' dough for his checks. 1936 I. L. Idriess Cattle King xviii. 170 Sid Kidman found every hotel, every boarding⁓house, every hash-house, every room crowded. 1946 ‘P. Quentin’ Puzzle for Fiends (1947) xxiv. 171 You'll have to take that job in a hashhouse after all. 1960 N. Hilliard Maori Girl 221, I see the hotels and the hash⁓houses. |
| 1895 W. C. Gore in Inlander Dec. 116 *Hash-joint, boarding-house. 1930 J. Dos Passos 42nd Parallel 101 Passing the same Chink hashjoint for the third time. |
| 1909 Man-o' Warsman Dec. 24/1 First Sergeant John J. Maloney earned another *hash-mark. 1935 G. & S. Lorimer Heart Specialist vi. 168 Slim and Shorty each had two gold stripes on their left sleeve that Slim called hash marks because they were service stripes and stood for the number of years of free food they'd had on Uncle Sam, he said. |
| 1706 S. Centlivre Love at a Venture v. Wks. (1723) 312 Your Father..swears..he'll slice me into *Hash-meat. |
| 1984 Which Micro? Dec. 12/2 Neither user-defined characters, nor the ‘*hash’ sign could be reproduced. 1986 Guardian 20 Feb. 15 Would I please therefore oblige her by using the musical notation provided (I gather that it is called a hash sign). |
| 1868 Gold Hill News (Nevada) 6 May, The nice young man of Washoe may or may not be some kind of a clerk, a *hash-slinger, or a check-guerrilla. 1895 W. C. Gore in Inlander Dec. 116 Hash-slinger, table waiter. 1946 Amer. Speech XXI. 86 The cooks and ‘hashslingers’ of former years went off to war or to the shipyards. |
| 1895 A. W. Pinero Second Mrs. Tanqueray ii. 71 Dreams are only a *hash-up of one's day-thoughts. 1902 N.Z. Illustr. Mag. VI. 452 While sharing their ‘hash-up’, he had [determined] to pitch camp on the [gum] field. 1914 Auto-motor Jrnl. 816/2 The so-called ‘motoring notes’ in the daily press are a thinly disguised hash-up of the best stuff in the motor press proper. 1970 Times 28 Feb. p. iv, A style perilously close to certain Colour Supplement hash-ups and clearly aligned for Over⁓ground consumption. |
Sense 6 in
Dict. becomes 8. Add:
6. Audio. Noise in a received signal which is due to faulty or imperfect equipment; also, loosely, any radio noise.
| 1949 H. J. Hicks Introductory Radio v. 91 The filter in the primary leads is used to prevent any ‘hash’ (r-f disturbance) that might be created by the commutator of the motor from traveling back along the primary wires. 1957 Electronics 1 Mar. 163/3 The atmospherics..are greater in amplitude than most of the peaks of the background hash after nulling the main source of power-line noise. 1975 L. Dills CB Slanguage Dict. 35 Hash and trash, background noise; signal unclear. 1982 Giant Bk. Electronics Projects i. 27 Place ceramic disc bypasses across the diodes..to reduce hash picked up on AM broadcast sets. 1990 Gramophone May 2104/2 Channel separation and signal-to-noise ratio were difficult to measure because of the presence of considerable hash in the output and a major leak of 176.4kHz energy..of some 2mV peak to peak. |
7. Computing. An act or process of hashing (*
hash v. 4). Usu.
attrib.| 1960 Berkeley & Lovett Gloss. Terms Computers & Data Processing 41 Hash total, a total for checking purposes, determined by adding together all the digits or all the numbers in a particular field in a batch of unit records, added with no attention to the meaning or significance of the total. 1964 in Computer Jrnl. (1975) XVIII. 277 (heading) Hash-coding functions for a complex variable. 1967 D. G. Hays Introd. Computational Linguistics v. 87 The method that we are about to examine is..hash addressing,..but what is characteristic about it is simply that the word to be looked up is regarded as a number, and an arithmetic computation performed on it. 1972 Communications Assoc. Computing Machinery XV. 303/2 One has the option, after the initial hash, of searching the entire record for the track. 1983 80 Microcomputing Mar. 16/2 The one-byte hash code for the hash index table sector must still be computed, but the need to find the file's granules is eliminated. 1990 Wall & Schwartz Programming perl i. 30 Internally, the keys are stored in a hash table, so lookups are always very fast regardless of how many entries are in the array. |
▪ III. hash, n.2 Colloq. abbrev. of
hashish.
| 1959 N. Mailer Advts. for Myself (1961) 245 Drawing upon hash, lush, Harlem, Spanish wife, Marxist culture [etc.]. 1967 Listener 31 Aug. 262/2 If people use dangerous machinery..while they are high on hash, the consequences may be..brash. 1968 A. Diment Gt. Spy Race viii. 143 What do you and Riordan do for a living—I thought he was just another part-time hash pusher? 1972 P. Dickinson Lizard in Cup x. 157 ‘It's morphine she's been on?’ said Pibble. But Tony shook her head. ‘Just grass. Hash.’ |
▸
hash brownie n.punningly after
hash browns n. at
hash n.1 Compounds 2
slang (
orig. U.S.) a brownie or other cake containing cannabis, eaten as an intoxicant.
| 1966 ‘Panama Rose’ Hashish Cookbk. 15 *Hash brownies... Pulverize 5 grams of top quality hash. Melt over hot water: 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate [etc.]. 1979 Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald Jrnl. 7 Dec. 18/5 Rae unwittingly got high on Kim's hash brownies and was hospitalized after walking into traffic. 1993 Guardian 18 Sept. (Weekend Suppl.) 21/4 Mike Goodman insists more people now roll joints and eat hash brownies than attend football matches, art galleries or church. |