Eng. quash and squash, and Sp. casar and concuasar
As we saw earlier, the English verb quash, pronounced
[ˈkʰwɒʃ] or [ˈkʰwɑʃ], depending on the dialect, is a 13th century loanword
from an Old French verb that was attested with different spellings, among them quaisser,
quaissier, quasier, and quassier (OED). The reflex of this
verb in Modern French is casser, meaning ‘to break’, as we mentioned
earlier. We find different spellings for this verb in Middle English, such as cwesse,
queysse, quasche, quassch, quassh, and quaysch.
The Old French verb seems to descend from a Vulgar Latin variant *quassiare
of classical Latin quăssāre,
the same Latin verb that has supposedly given us Sp. quejar, as we saw
in the preceding section.
The verb quash has two quite different main
meanings in Modern English:
(1) ‘to
put down or suppress forcibly and completely’ (AHD), which is applied to
things such as revolts, as in quash a rebellion; this sense can be
translated into Spanish as sofocar, aplastar, or acallar;
and
(2) ‘to
set aside or annul, especially by judicial action’ (AHD), which is a legal term,
e.g. The High Court later quashed his conviction for murder (LDCE); this
sense of quash translates into Spanish as anular, invalidar, or revocar
It is thought that the reason there are two such rather
different meanings for Eng. quash is that the these meanings actually come
ultimately from two different Latin verbs which merged at some point in
Medieval Latin, before the word was borrowed into English or even French. Only
one of these meanings, the ‘suppress’ sense, would descend from classical Lat. quassāre, whereas the ‘cancel’
sense presumably comes from a post-classical Lat. cassāre, which merged with quassāre in Medieval Latin and
from there made it into Old French. This Latin verb cassāre originally meant ‘to
bring to naught, destroy’ and in the language of jurists, ‘to annul, make null
or void’ (synonymous with abrogāre; L&S). This verb is attested in the 4th
century with the sense ‘to destroy’, in the 5th century with the sense ‘to
annul’, and by the 12th century with the sense ‘to reject’ (OED). The original
Latin verb cassāre
was derived from the classical Latin adjective cassus/a/um ‘null, empty,
hollow, etc.’, a word that has not been passed on to most Romance languages (cass‑us
> cass‑āre).
The Latin verb cassāre has been borrowed by Spanish, though it is a rare
legal term. Portuguese also borrowed the Latin verb, as cassar. This
Spanish verb is casar, which is homophonous and homonymous with the verb
casar a transitive verb that means ‘to marry’ (the intransitive meaning ‘to
get married’ is given by the pronominal or reflexive casarse). The
meaning of this legal verb casar is simply ‘to quash’, which the DLE
defines by means of some synonyms: ‘anular, abrogar, derogar’ (cf. Eng. annul,
abrogate, derogate). María Moliner’s dictionary is more explicit
and tells us that this verb is typically used to describe the annulment of a court’s
sentence by a higher court.[1]
María Moliner’s dictionary also tells us that the verb casar
that means ‘to quash’ used to have a synonym, now obsolete, namely concuasar,
a loanword from Lat. conquassāre,
a verb derived from the verb quassāre by means of the intensive prefix con‑ (con‑quass‑āre) and which meant ‘to
shake severely’ and ‘to shatter, dash to pieces’ (L&S). The obsolete
Spanish verb concuasar does not appear in many Spanish dictionaries
since it is now obsolete. It does appear in the DLE and MM dictionaries and,
interestingly, only María Moliner’s tells us that this verb had the ‘annul’
sense (like casar), now obsolete. Both dictionaries tell us that concuasar
used to have a ‘smash, break’ sense (like in the Latin source). In addition,
María Moliner’s dictionary tells us about the obsolete ‘annul’ sense. The
Academies’ dictionary tells us that in Bolivia concuasar is still used
in Bolivia to this day as a transitive verb with the meaning ‘to match up, fit
together’, which is curiously a derived sense of the other, unrelated verb casar
that means ‘to marry’, according to the Academies’ dictionary (DLE).[2]
The Diccionario de americanismos (DA) differs somewhat with this claim
and tells us that concuasar is an intransitive verb used in Perú,
Bolivia and Paraguay to mean ‘to match, adjust or square one thing with another’
and in Bolivia to mean ‘for two or more people agree on something that has been
said or done’.[3]
Most dictionaries treat the two senses of the English verb quash
as just two senses of the very same word, a single verb quash. However, at
least one major dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, gives
two different homonymous verbs side by side because of their different ultimate
sources. Thus, if we look for the word quash in this dictionary, we find
the entries quash1 and quash2.
In addition to borrowing the French descendant of the Latin verb
cassāre,
English also borrowed a Latin noun derived from this verb, namely the late
Latin action noun cassātĭōn‑,
derived by means of the suffix ‑ĭōn‑
from the stem cassa‑t‑ of the verb’s passive participle cassātus (cass‑ā‑t‑ĭōn‑). This noun is not
attested in classical Latin, so it may have been formed in Medieval Latin or
even in French after this language borrowed the Latin verb.
The noun cassation was borrowed into both English and
French in the early 15th century. The OED says that Eng. cassation, pronounced
[kæˈseɪ̯ʃən] or [kəˈseɪ̯ʃən], came into English from Latin, but it is quite
likely that it was formed in French first and from there it passed on to
English. The meaning of these words was ‘the action of making null or void;
cancellation, abrogation’ (OED).[4]
The cognate word casación is attested in Spanish with the same meaning, also
by the end of the 15th century, and it probably also came through French. The
noun is found in collocations such as recurso de casación ‘appeal in a high
court’, tribunal de casación ‘court of cassation’.
The OED tells us that the noun cassation was also
used with another sense in the 17th century, a sense that is now obsolete: ‘dismissal
of a soldier; cashiering’ (OED). Interestingly, English has another noun cassation,
one that means ‘a piece of instrumental music of the eighteenth century similar
to the serenade, and often performed out of doors’ (OED), a ‘minor musical
genre related to the serenade and divertimento’ (WP). This is a 19th century
loan from German kassation, a term used since the second half of the
18th century for a ‘loosely assembled sets of short movements intended for
outdoor performance by orchestral or chamber ensembles’, a genre that ‘was
popular in southern German-speaking lands’ (WP). The origin for the musical
sense of this word has been said to be Italian cassazione, for example
by the OED, but this is by no means certain.[5]
English has another verb that is ultimately related
to Lat. quassāre, namely one derived in Vulgar Latin from this verb by
means of the prefix ex‑, i.e. *exquassāre. This verb made it into
Old French as esquasser (also escasser) or esquacer (also escacier)
(cognate with Italian squassare). English borrowed this verb from French
resulting in Modern English squash, pronounced [ˈskwɒʃ], [ˈskwɔʃ],
or [skwɑʃ], depending on the dialect. This verb has two major meanings, each
one with additional subsenses (COED):
(1) ‘crush
or squeeze (something) so that it becomes flat, soft, or out of shape; squeeze
or force into a restricted space’ = Sp. aplastar, chafar, espachurrar;
and
(2) ‘suppress
or subdue; firmly reject (an idea or suggestion); silence (someone), typically
with a humiliating remark’ = Sp. acallar, aplastar, etc.
From the verb squash a homonymous noun was
created in English. Its most basic meanings are ‘the act or sound of squashing’
and ‘the fact or condition of being squashed’ (AHD). This noun is more common
in British English and its Spanish translations would be: apiñamiento, agolpamiento,
apretujón, or apretón.
The noun squash has also been the name of a sport since
around 1900, namely ‘a racket game played in a closed walled court with a
rubber ball’ (AHD). The sport’s name is derived from the name of the soft,
rubber ball used in this racket game, squash ball, and it is an ellipsis
for (British) squash rackets or (US) squash tennis (OED). Spanish
has borrowed this English word for the name of the sport without any changes or
adaptations: squash. The DLE advises us that this word should be pronounced
‘[eskuás]’ (according to María Moliner’s dictionary, it should be ‘[escuásh]’).
Finally, let us mention that in Great Britain, the same noun squash is
also the name of ‘a citrus-based soft drink’ (AHD). The OED tells us that since
the late 19th century, this has been a short form for the compound lemon-squash.
Finally, note that this verb squash and the nouns
derived from it are totally unrelated to the homophonous noun squash
that means ‘a gourd with flesh that can be cooked and eaten as a vegetable’, as
well as ‘the plant which produces squashes. [Several species and varieties of
the genus Cucurbita.]’ (COED). This noun squash is a loanword from the
Native American Narragansett language asquutasquash, borrowed in the
17th century, which is derived from the root asq that means ‘raw,
uncooked’ and meant something like ‘vegetable eating green/raw’. The vegetable
name translates into Spanish as calabaza.
[1] The original says: ‘Derecho
Particularmente, anular un *tribunal una *↘sentencia dada por otro. ⇒ Concuasar’
(MM).
[2] In María Moliner’s dictionary, the original says: ‘concuasar
1. (ant.) tr. Hacer pedazos ↘algo con un golpe. ≃ *Romper. 2. (ant.) Casar (*anular)’ (MM), and in the Academies’
dictionary: ‘concuasar 1. tr. Bol. casar (ǁ corresponder una cosa
con otra). 2. ant. Quebrantar, estrellar, hacer pedazos’ (DLE).
[3] The original says: ‘concuasar. I. 1. intr. Pe, Bo,
Py. Coincidir, ajustarse o cuadrarse una cosa con otra. 2. Bo.
Coincidir dos o más personas en algo que se ha dicho o hecho’ (DA).
[4] The OED also tells us that there was a ‘Court of Cassation [French Cour
de cassation], in France, the appellation of the supreme court of appeal,
as having the power in the last resort to alter, or cancel, or quash (casser)
decisions of the other courts which are wrong in form or law’ (OED)
[5] Wikipedia has a good
summary of the speculations that have been made about the origin of the German
term kassation: ‘The etymology of the musical term is uncertain. Mozart’s cassations
K. 63 and K. 99 open with marches, and the term has been speculatively linked
to the Italian word cassa, meaning “drum”. Hermann Abert was among those
who thought that the term derives from the Italian cassare, meaning “to
dismiss”, implying a musical farewell, or Abschiedsmusik. The French
word casser (to break) was also invoked, based on the notion that the
movements could be freely broken up into any order. A more likely derivation,
reflecting the outdoor character of the genre, involves a transformation of the
Austrian dialectal word gassatim: specifically, gassatim gehen
was an expression commonly used by local eighteenth-century musicians to refer to
street performance’ (WP).
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