Bash
name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A forceful blow or impact. informal
"He got a bash on the head."
- 2 a vigorous blow wordnet
- 3 A large party; a gala event. informal
"They had a big bash to celebrate their tenth anniversary."
- 4 an uproarious party wordnet
- 5 An attempt at doing something. UK, informal
"give something a bash"
- 1 To strike heavily. informal
"The thugs kept bashing the cowering victim."
- 2 To abash (make ashamed) obsolete, transitive
"His countenance was bold and bashed not."
- 3 hit hard wordnet
- 4 To collide; used with into or together. informal
"Don't bash into me with that shopping trolley."
- 5 To criticize harshly. informal, transitive
"He bashed my ideas."
- 1 The Free Software Foundation's command interpreter (the "shell") for UNIX-like operating systems.
"Bash stands for “Bourne-again shell”."
- 2 The scripting language provided with this interpreter.
- 3 Shortening of Sebastian.
Example
More examples"I'm having a bash myself at the ballet."
Etymology
From Middle English *basshen, *basken, likely from Old Norse *baska (“to strike”), akin to Swedish basa (“to baste, whip, lash, flog”), Danish baske (“to beat, strike, cudgel”), German patschen (“to slap”)
From Middle English baschen, baissen. See abash.
Short for Bourne-again shell, a pun on the name of the Bourne shell, an earlier Unix shell designed by Stephen R. Bourne, and the Christian concept of being "born again".
Related phrases
More for "bash"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.