In an email to a coworker I wrote, “Let me know if you would like to meet to hash out some of these ideas.” When I reread the email before sending it, my mind connected hash out to hash, short for hashish, and in a brief moment of panic I wondered, “Does the phrase hash out come from the word hashish? Is it even appropriate to use hash out in a work email?” What started as a quick Google search led me down an unexpected journey involving breakfast foods, assassins, and Twitter.
Hash
To hash comes from the French word hacher, “to chop up,” which in turn comes from the Old French word hache, or “axe.” Upon reading this my mind immediately thinks hatchet.
Hash means “to hack” or “to chop into small pieces.” This is where words like hashed browns and corned beef hash come from. Delicious.
From to hash came the phase to make hash out of, meaning “to ruin something,” as you would if you hacked something into little pieces. Eventually came the word rehash, or “go over something again.” Finally, this became to hash over, similar to “to talk over”.
Got it? Okay, good. Now set all that aside for a moment.
Thrash
Unrelated to hash is the word thrash, which has a modern meaning of “to knock, beat, or toss.” Thrash comes from the word thresh, which is the process of beating cereal crops to separate the grain. Thrash out eventually came to mean “working through the details of something.”
So, you have to hash over, meaning to discuss something again, and you have to thrash out, meaning to work out the details of something. It is natural, then, that to hash over and to thrash out would become conflated into one phrase, to hash out, meaning “to engage in vigorous discussion to resolve differences or to create a plan.”
So, that is where the phrase to hash out comes from. Perfectly safe to use in a work email. But wait, what about my original concern that hash out was related to hashish? To find out I did some further investigating.
Hashish
Hashish is the Arabic word for “powdered hemp,” from the word hashsha, or “it became dry.” Okay, so not related to hache. But the Etymonline webpage for hashish did have assassin as a Related Entry, which was very intriguing. As it turns out, assassin comes from the word hashishiyyin, or “hashish user.” According to Etymonline, “A fanatical Ismaili Muslim sect of the mountains of Lebanon in the time of the Crusades, under leadership of the ‘Old Man of the Mountains’… they had a reputation for murdering opposing leaders after intoxicating themselves by eating hashish.” Well, now you know.
Hashtag
Thinking about the word hash made me think about the word hashtag. I mean, the # symbol gets around. It is used to mean “number”, it’s called the “pound” sign, and it is used on the internet to mean “hashtag.” Why all the different names for the same symbol?
Let’s start with pound. The word pound, to mean a unit of weight, comes from the Latin libra pondo, literally meaning “a pound by weight.” Libra pondo was abbreviated with the symbol ℔ (Ever wonder why we abbreviate pound as lb.?). The ℔ symbol was later simplified to #.
Okay, but what about “number”? In the 1850s, the # symbol was used by bookkeepers to mean “number,” but only in the United States. Outside the U.S., the word pound refers only to the currency (£) or weight (lb.) and “number” is abbreviated as “No.” Instead, outside the U.S., # is called the “hash” symbol. This is most likely from the shared origin of hash and hatch mark or cross-hatch. Look, it has come full circle!
Starting in 1988, the # symbol was used in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to denote topics of interest (i.e., tags) through which users communicated. In 2007, Chris Messina suggested using the hashtag on the Twitter social media platform as a way to easily group and find content on the site. The idea caught on and in 2009 Twitter began to hyperlink hashtags, increasing their popularity. Ten years later, hashtags are used by all sorts of social media websites, organizations, celebrities, and politicians. But note: while #assassins is read as “hashtag assassins,” the # symbol is not called a “hashtag.” It is still called a “pound” or “hash” symbol.
Bonus: Flail
Researching trash/thresh brought forward the concept of the flail. Now, I admit, I only knew flail as the weapon (probably from too many movies and video games). Regardless, I did not know that flail was an agricultural tool, specifically one used for separating grains from their husks (you know, threshing). I never connected flail the weapon with to flail the action, as in to move like a whip or a flail. Sometimes the connections between words are obvious. Other times you get #hashbrownassassins.
Sources
https://www.etymonline.com/word/hash#etymonline_v_6193
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/40434/origin-of-hashing-out-plans
https://www.etymonline.com/word/thrash#etymonline_v_13256
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_sign#Usage_in_the_United_Kingdom_and_Ireland
https://www.etymonline.com/word/assassin
https://www.etymonline.com/word/hashish?ref=etymonline_crossreference
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