a dish of diced or chopped meat and often vegetables, as of leftover corned beef or veal and potatoes, sautéed in a frying pan or of meat, potatoes, and carrots cooked together in gravy.
a mess, jumble, or muddle: a hash of unorganized facts and figures.
a reworking of old and familiar material: This essay is a hash of several earlier and better works.
"a stew," 1660s, from hash (v.). Meaning "a mix, a mess" is from 1735.
hash
v.
1650s, "to hack, chop into small pieces," from French hacher "chop up," from Old French hache "ax" (see hatchet). Hash browns is short for hash browned potatoes (1917), with the -ed omitted, as in mash potatoes. The hash marks on a football field were so called 1960s, from similarity to hash marks, armed forces slang for "service stripes on the sleeve of a military uniform" (1909), which supposedly were called that because they mark the number of years one has had free food (hash (n.1)) from the Army; but perhaps there is a connection with the noun form of hatch (v.2).
Subdue or get rid of someone, deal with a troublemaker, as in If John starts another argument we know just how to settle his hash. This term, dating from about 1800, uses hash in the sense of “a mess.”
