sash

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• Rhymes: -æʃ

Arabic شَاش‎ (šāš, “muslin cloth”).

sash (plural sashes)

1. A piece of cloth designed to be worn around the waist.

   Synonyms: belt, cummerbund, obi, waistband

2. A decorative length of cloth worn over the shoulder to the opposite hip, often for ceremonial or other formal occasions.

sash (third-person singular simple present sashes, present participle sashing, simple past and past participle sashed)

1. (transitive) To adorn with a sash.
   • 1796, Edmund Burke, Letters on a Regicide Peace, Letter IV to the Earl Fitzwilliam, in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, London: C. and J. Rivington, 1826, Volume 9, p. 46,

     […] the Costume of the Sans-culotte Constitution of 1793 was absolutely insufferable […] but now they are so powdered and perfumed, and ribanded, and sashed and plumed, that […] there is something in it more grand and noble, something more suitable to an awful Roman Senate, receiving the homage of dependant Tetrarchs.

[circa 1680] From sashes, from French châssis (“frame (of a window or door)”), taken as a plural and -s trimmed off by the late 17th century.[1] See also chassis.

Woman and boy standing at an open sash window

sash (plural sashes)

1. The opening part (casement) of a window usually containing the glass panes, hinged to the jamb, or sliding up and down as in a sash window.
   • 1722, Daniel Defoe, The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, London: W. Chetwood and T. Edling, p. 91,

     One Morning he pulls off his Diamond Ring, and writes upon the Glass of the Sash in my Chamber this Line, You I Love, and you alone.

   • 1823, Clement Clarke Moore, “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” (“The Night before Christmas”),

     Away to the window I flew like a flash,

     Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.

   • 1908, Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives’ Tale, Book 4, Chapter 2,

     She chiefly recalled the Square under snow; cold mornings, and the coldness of the oil-cloth at the window, and the draught of cold air through the ill-fitting sash (it was put right now)!

2. (software, graphical user interface) A draggable vertical or horizontal bar used to adjust the relative sizes of two adjacent windows.

   Synonym: splitter

3. In a sawmill, the rectangular frame in which the saw is strained and by which it is carried up and down with a reciprocating motion; the gate.

sash (third-person singular simple present sashes, present participle sashing, simple past and past participle sashed)

1. (transitive) To furnish with a sash.
   • 1741, Samuel Richardson, Pamela, London, Volume 3, Letter 1, p. 2,

     The old Bow-windows he will have preserv'd, but will not have them sash’d,

• unsashed