slash

• (UK) IPA^(key): /slaʃ/
• (US) IPA^(key): /slæʃ/

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: slash
• Rhymes: -æʃ

Originally a verb of uncertain etymology. Possibly from French esclachier (“to break”). Used in the Wycliffe Bible as slascht (see 1 Kings 5:18) but otherwise unattested until 16th century. Conjunctive use from various applications of the punctuation mark ⟨/⟩. See also slash fiction.

slash (plural slashes)

 

1. A slashing action or motion:
   1. A swift, broad cutting stroke, especially one made with an edged weapon or whip.

      A slash of his blade just missed my ear.

   2. (sports) A wide striking motion made with an implement such as a cricket bat, hockey stick, or lacrosse stick.

      He took a wild slash at the ball but the captain saved the team's skin by hacking it clear and setting up the team for a strike on the goal.

   3. (figuratively) A sharp reduction in resources allotted.

      After the war ended, the army saw a 50% slash in their operating budget.

2. A mark made by slashing:
   1. A deep cut or laceration, as made by an edged weapon or whip.

      He was bleeding from a slash across his cheek.

   2. (botany) A deep taper-pointed incision in a plant.
3. Something resembling such a mark:
   1. (fashion) A slit in an outer garment, usually exposing a lining or inner garment of a contrasting color or design.
   2. (US and Canada) A clearing in a forest, particularly one made by logging, fire, or other violent action.
      • 1895, Henry Van Dyke, Little Rivers: A Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness:

        We passed over the shoulder of a ridge and around the edge of a fire slash, and then we had the mountain fairly before us.

   3. (originally US, typography) The slash mark: the punctuation mark ⟨/⟩.
      • 1965, Dmitri A. Borgmann, Language on Vacation, page 240:

        Initial inquiries among professional typists uncover names like slant, slant line, slash, and slash mark. Examination of typing instruction manuals discloses additional names such as diagonal and diagonal mark, and other sources provide the designation oblique.

      1. (often proscribed) Any similar typographical mark, such as the backslash ⟨\⟩.
   4. (vulgar, slang) The vulva.
4. (US and Canada) The loose woody debris remaining from a slash; the trimmings left while preparing felled trees for removal.

   Slash generated during logging may constitute a fire hazard.

5. (fandom slang) Slash fiction; fan fiction focused on homoerotic pairing of fictional characters.
   • 2013, Katherine Arcement, “Diary”, in London Review of Books, volume 35, number 5:

     Comments merely allow readers to proclaim themselves mortally offended by the content of a story, despite having been warned in large block letters of INCEST or SLASH (any kind of sex between two men or two women: the term originated with the Kirk/Spock pairing – it described the literal slash between their names).

• (deep cut): gash
• (typographic mark): slash mark; solidus (formal name); stroke (chiefly UK); forward slash, forward stroke, foreslash, frontslash, front slash (sometimes proscribed); virgule (marking line breaks); shilling mark (UK, historical currency sign); slants, slant lines (marking pronunciations); separatrix (proofreading mark); scratch comma (former use as a form of comma); oblique, oblique mark, oblique stroke, oblique dash (chiefly UK, dated); diagonal, diagonal mark (dated); virgula (obsolete); virgil (UK, obsolete); whack (improper); bar (improper, obsolete)
• (vulgar term for female genitalia): See cunt

• backslash

• (typographic mark): fraction bar (in fractions); division sign (in division)

• division slash
• fraction slash

Punctuation

slash (third-person singular simple present slashes, present participle slashing, simple past and past participle slashed)

1. To cut or attempt to cut, particularly:
   1. To cut with a swift broad stroke of an edged weapon.

      They slashed at him with their swords, but only managed to nick one of his fingers.

      She hacked and slashed her way across the jungle.

   2. To produce a similar wound with a savage strike of a whip.
   3. (ice hockey) To strike swiftly and laterally with a hockey stick, usually across another player's arms or legs.
   4. (figuratively) To reduce sharply.

      Competition forced them to slash prices.

      Profits are only up right now because they slashed overhead, but employee morale and product quality have collapsed too.

   5. (fashion) To create slashes in a garment.
   6. (figuratively) To criticize cuttingly.
2. To strike violently and randomly, particularly:
   1. (cricket) To swing wildly at the ball.
3. To move quickly and violently.
4. To crack a whip with a slashing motion.
5. (US, Canada) To clear land, (particularly forestry) with violent action such as logging or brushfires or (agriculture, uncommon) through grazing.

   The province's traditional slash-and-burn agriculture was only sustainable with a much smaller population.

6. (intransitive, fandom slang) To write slash fiction.
   • 1997 December 17, ASCEM, quoting Ruth Gifford, “Re: An Interesting Question, re Slash vs. Gay Fiction”, in alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated‎^[1] (Usenet):

     Having read slash for other fandoms (mainly X-Files and Sentinel), I can say the whole gay issue gets dealt with more often in that slash than it does in Trek slash. That's not to say that all the slashers who slash in a "modern-era" show deal with AIDS, homophobia and other gay issues, but some of them do.

• (to strike with a whip): lash, scourge, thrash
• (to strike a whip): crack

• (slash fiction): ship

slash (not comparable)

1. Used to note the sound or action of a slash.

slash

1. (Canada, US) Used to connect two or more identities in a list.

   Saul Hudson is a famous musician/songwriter.

   • 2001, Drake Sather, Ben Stiller, John Hamburg, Zoolander, spoken by Fabio Lanzoni:

     What this, the Slashie, means is that you consider me the best actor slash model and not the other way around.

   • 2022 October 2, Tom Phillips, “‘A day of hope’: Lula fans eager to see Bolsonaro defeated”, in The Guardian‎^[2]:

     “It’s been a joke-slash-tragedy,” the restaurant host, 29, said of the president’s tumultuous far-right administration as she cast her vote against him in her country’s most important election in decades.

2. (Canada, US) Used to list alternatives.

   Alternatives can be marked by the slash/stroke/solidus punctuation mark, a tall, right-slanting oblique line.

   Read: Alternatives can be marked by the slash-slash-stroke-slash-solidus punctuation mark, a tall, right-slanting oblique line.

Typically written with the slash mark ⟨/⟩ and only spoken or transcribed as the word "slash". Often omitted from speech and only marked as a brief pause between the alternatives. Exclusively omitted in common constructions such as and/or, either/or, and washer/dryer.

• (exclusive or): or
• (inclusive or): and, or, and/or
• (UK): stroke

•   slash on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Uncertain. Compare Scots slash (“large splash”), possibly from Old French esclache. Slang use for urination attested from the 1950s.

slash (plural slashes)

1. (obsolete, rare) A drink of something; a draft.
2. (UK, slang, vulgar) A piss: an act of urination.

   Where's the gents? I need to take a slash.

3. (UK, slang, vulgar, rare) Piss; urine.

   That bus shelter smells of slash.

slash (third-person singular simple present slashes, present participle slashing, simple past and past participle slashed)

1. (intransitive, UK, slang) To piss, to urinate.
   • 1973, Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers,, page 189:

     If you can slash in my bed (I thought) don't tell me you can't suck my cock.

Uncertain. Compare British dialectal slashy (“wet and dirty, miry”) and Scots slash (“act of walking forcefully through water or mud”) and slatch (“wet and muddy place, mire”). Perhaps related to Swedish slask (“slush”).

Compare also slash (“clearing in a forest”): in many cases it is difficult to tell whether that sense or this one is meant. (Also compare flash (“a marsh; a pool of water”).)

slash (plural slashes)

1. (eastern US) A swampy area; a swamp.
   • 1687, Colonial Virginia Patents 7, page 590, quoted in 1940, George Davis McJimsey, Topographic Terms in Virginia, page 120:

     On the North side of one of ye Windings of a great Slash or Swamp called ye Roundabout.

   • 1694, Edmond Andros, Isabella Mackland, colonial Virginia record (granting land to Robert Beverly), quoted in 1988, Beverley Fleet, Virginia Colonial Abstracts, page 318:

     three acres one Rood and Six pole of Land [...] Extending Northward along the Ditch thirty six poles and two fifths of a pole to a slash called Pitch and Tar Slash or Swamp[,] then along that Slash till it come to the Main Cart road westward [...]

   • 1694 October 26, colonial Virginia record (regarding Capt. Richard Halle of the County of Essex)m quoted in 1988, Beverley Fleet, Virginia Colonial Abstracts, page 406:

     720 acres "lying in the Forrest between Rappahannock and Mattapony river". Adjoins Goldman's land, the line of Robins by and ^[sic] old Indian path in a slash, the land of Majr Robert Beverley, deceased.

   • 1714, Colonial Virginia Patents 10, pages 153, 168, quoted in 1940, George Davis McJimsey, Topographic Terms in Virginia, page 121:

     Thence . . . to two small pines by a Slash or Sunken ground. . . . Thence . . . to two white oaks by a slash in lowground.

   • 1715, Colonial Virginia Patents 10, 247, quoted in 1940, George Davis McJimsey, Topographic Terms in Virginia, page 121:

     Beginning at the North side of a Slash incomposeing Long [...]

   • 1747 September, John Garrott, Virginia deed (of Amelia County, Deed Book 2, page 542) quoted in 1988, Beverley Fleet, Virginia Colonial Abstracts, page 459:

     80 acres in Amelia Co., in the fork betw Persimmon Slash and the Gulley[.]

2. (eastern US, uncommon) A slash pine, which grows in such (swampy) areas.
   • 1932, Mr. Yon, statement regarding a waterway from Choctawhatchee Bay to West Bay, Florida, printed in the Hearings of the United States House Committee on Rivers and Harbors (1932), page 8:

     […] second growth long-leaf yellow slash. And also we have a short-leaf pine.

   • [1935, Miscellaneous Publication, issue 209, page 15:

     Slash pine (Pinus caribaea Morelet) / Slash pine is also known as yellow slash, swamp pine, hill slash, and Cuban pine.]

3. (Scotland) A large quantity of watery food such as broth.

slash (third-person singular simple present slashes, present participle slashing, simple past and past participle slashed)

1. (Scotland, intransitive) To work in wet conditions.

See slatch

slash (plural slashes)

1. (UK) Alternative form of slatch: a deep trough of finely-fractured culm or a circular or elliptical pocket of coal.

• Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "slash, v.¹ & v.²" & "slash, n.¹, n.², n.³, & n.⁴". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1911.

• LSSAH

Unadapted borrowing from English slash.

• IPA^(key): /sleʃ/

slash n (plural slash-uri)

1. slash (sign)

• IPA^(key): /esˈlaʃ/ [esˈlaʃ]
• Rhymes: -aʃ
• Syllabification: slash

slash m (plural slash or slashes)

1. (punctuation) slash