Downing Q Shots

A couple of words in queue to question are quench, quell, and squelch. And maybe if there's time we can get to queue/cue, too. (As opposed to too, too cute.)

Quench is defined by several words: slake (I think quench is more commonly understood than slake), satisfy, or allay (again, allay is less understood). When it comes to fires, it means put out or quell, the same word used when using quench in response to a rebellion (something I haven't encounter lately, since there have been few rebellions quenched recently). Basically, the meaning of quench is to do what is necessary to make the situation go away. You can quench a thirst or a fire with water. It takes more than water to quench a rebellion.

Quench is the modern spelling of the Old English word acwencan, It may have come from the Old English word cwincan, or from (my favorite language I know nothing about) the Old Frisian kwinka.

Quell, on the other hand, comes from the Old English word cwellan that meant to murder or kill, which I find interesting because in my mind it has a sense of peace and quiet. Perhaps that's because it is often used in regards fears. You quell fears, not quench them But both are used of rebellions; when quenched is used I take it to mean it took some violence but when quell is used I take it to mean it was somewhat peaceful suppression of the uprising. The milder sense of extinguishing that I attach to the word came into use in about 1300.

One of the defining words for quench was slake. It also comes from Old English, from slacian or sleacian. That word (however it was spelled) meant the same as our word slack: loosen in tension or remiss in doing. Then in the early 1400s the sense of making slack or inactive was applied to the use of slake and it took off in the direction of allaying thirst, hunger, or an emotion like desire or wrath. That has now become the meaning of slake and we have (since the 1510s) used slack for the original meaning of slack. The word slacker is "an agent noun" (according to etymonline.com, not James Bond) from slack and was only popularized in 1994 though it dates back to 1897.

Fears can be quelled or allayed. The difference? Quelled has a sense of calmed, allayed a sense of relieved or done away with. My fears, when quelled, remain but are no longer relevant; my fears when allayed are set aside, no longer existing. The Old English word from which we get allay (alecgan) meant put down or give up (I like the symmetry) or remit.

How you get from alecgan to allay may be interesting to one or two people: in early Middle English (but may be not in late Old English) the differentiation between the pronunciations of the y and g sounds were not very distinct, so the word alecgan was confused with alloy and allege. The Oxford English Dictionary (bow in reverence, pardner!) explains it thusly: "Amid the overlapping meanings that thus arose, there was developed a perplexing network of use of allay and allege, that belong to no one of the original vbs., but combine the senses of two or more of them." And etymonline explains the movement from one to two "l"s thusly: "the double -l- is 17c., a mistaken Latinism."

So where does squelch fit? And why does it have an s? While squelch came into use in the early 1600s its etymology is less distinct. It originally meant simply to drop, fall, or stomp on something soft so that it crushes. Perhaps it is onomatopoetic in origin. very early in its existence, perhaps because of its similarity to quench and quell, there was an attempt to drop the s from the word. You can still find it in the dictionary; it's a little harder to find it elsewhere.

It is interesting to note that while the primary meaning in America is still listed as to crush it also has a second (and in my experience more common) meaning of to silence or suppress. Squelching applies to words rather than emotions in American use. In British dictionaries the primary definition is the onomatopoetic sense: "to walk laboriously through soft wet material or with wet shoes, making a sucking noise." Only the third definition mirrors the American use: "to crush completely or squash."

Now we add squash to the mix. The verb squash is the first word for today that does not come from Old English. It came from Old French, in the early 1300s. It was originally spelled squachen because the Old French word was esquasser, or escasser. The Old French may have gotten esquasser from Latin, from combining the prefix ex- with the Latin word for shatter, quassare. The Old French word also meant crush, which is the primary meaning in English, whether of something tangible or not. Squash is used most often in regards to something tangible. You squash a bug or a food but not often a rebellion or an emotion. When that happens I think people mean to use squelch.

You may think the noun squash, referring to the gourd fruit, got its name because it needs to be squashed to be eaten, but that's not the etymology. The Narraganset or Algonquin word for the gourd is askutasquash, which literally translated means "the thing that may be eaten raw." I've never eaten raw squash, nor do I desire to do so.

Any desire I had to eat squash has been quashed, though my hunger is not quenched. So don't quell the fire if you plan for me to eat squash, and you'll quell my concerns. They'll be allayed when I sit down to eat.