dash / dash/ • v. 1. [intr.] run or travel somewhere in a great hurry. ∎  (often dash about/around) move about in a great hurry, esp. in the attempt to do several things in a short period of time: I dash about to straighten things up.2. [tr.] strike or fling (something) somewhere with great force, esp. so as to have a destructive effect; hurl: the ship was dashed upon the rocks. ∎  [intr.] strike forcefully against something: a gust of rain dashed against the bricks. ∎  [tr.] destroy or frustrate (a person's hopes or expectations). ∎  [tr.] cause (someone) to lose confidence; dispirit: I won't tell Stuart—I think he'd be dashed.• n. 1. [in sing.] an act of running somewhere suddenly and hastily: she made a dash for the door. ∎  a journey or period of time characterized by urgency or eager haste: a dash to the airport. ∎  a short fast race; a sprint: the 100-yard dash.2. a small quantity of a substance, esp. a liquid, added to something else: whiskey with a dash of soda. ∎ fig. a small amount of a particular quality adding piquancy or distinctiveness to something else: a dash of sophistication.3. a horizontal stroke in writing or printing to mark a pause or break in sense, or to represent omitted letters or words. ∎  the longer signal of the two used in Morse code. Compare with dot¹ . ∎  Mus. a short vertical mark placed above or beneath a note to indicate that it is to be performed in a very staccato manner.4. impetuous or flamboyant vigor and confidence; panache.5. short for dashboard.PHRASAL VERBS: dash something off write something hurriedly and without much premeditation.

DASH. The PUNCTUATION mark (—), used to indicate pauses and asides; it occurs singly, or in parenthetical pairs when the main sentence is resumed after the pause: compare commas and brackets. The main uses are: (1) To indicate an additional statement or fact, with more emphasis than is conveyed by commas or brackets: She is a solicitor—and a very successful one as well; They say that people in the north are more friendly—and helpful—than people in the south. (2) To indicate a pause, especially for effect at the end of a sentence: There is only one outcome—bankruptcy. (3) To add an afterthought: She wore a red dress—a very bright red. In print, the dash is usually represented by an em RULE (as in the preceding examples), although some styles favour the shorter en rule with a space on either side. An em rule is about twice the width of an en rule, and about three or four times the width of a HYPHEN. An unspaced en rule is often used as a link in cases such as 1944–80 and the London—Brighton line, where it is equivalent to to. In writing and typing, it is difficult to maintain any distinction in appearance between these three marks; few people attempt to do so in writing, but in typing some writers use a hyphen with spaces to left and right, or two hyphens together (with similar spaces). Dashes are also used non-punctuationally to stand for omitted letters, or for a whole word; for example a coarse word in reported speech: ‘D—n you all,’ he said. The dash is sometimes used as a replacement for quotation marks (inverted commas) in printed DIALOGUE; for example, in the work of James Joyce, who disliked what he called ‘perverted commas’:—Who is that? said the man, peering through the darkness.
—Me, pa.
—Who are you? Charlie?
—No, pa. Tom.
(Dubliners, 1914)

See ANACOLUTHON, PARENTHESIS.

DASH

Israeli political party, centrist in tendency, which surfaced at the time of the 1977 Knesset elections through the initiative of Professor Yigael Yadin. Dash ran its campaign advocating change, and the party won fifteen seats. In June 1977, after much debate, delay, and a very close vote, the leadership of the party threw its support to the right-wing coalition government of Menachem Begin. In November 1978, a split in this bloc led to a majority of its members rallying to Likud. The rest, under the leadership of Meir Amit, participated in constituting a new party, Shinui.

SEE ALSO Begin, Menachem;Likud;Shinui Party.

dash strike with violence (with many transf. and fig. uses) XIII; move violently XIV; euph. for ‘damn’ (partly from the use of a dash — in place of this word) XIX. ME. dasche, dasse, prob. of imit. orig.; an appropriate base *dask- is repr. by Sw. daska, Da. daske beat, but no older Scand. forms are recorded.
Hence dash sb. act of dashing XIV; stroke made with a pen, etc. XVI.

Dash

a small quantity thrown in or mingled with a larger mass or amount.

Examples: dash of good blood in their veins, 1712; of brandy, 1697; of commuters—Lipton, 1970; of eccentricity, 1820; of evil, 1678; of my former life, 1611; of light, 1713; of the ocean, 1784; of rain, 1700; of water, 1677.