Picked up a bottle of squash and got to wondering about the term “squash”, so I went digging around on the internet. Of course all the returns are squash (cucurbita) not squash the drink. Keep digging and more specificity and finally find out the obvious, “sqaush” is a concentrated fruit juice. No shit. Dig more and finally find out that it’s originally from a drink called “lemon squash”. Real helpful. So where does “lemon squash” come from? Who knows. There’s a curcubita called “lemon squash” that seems to be inescapable when searching for the origins of the drink.
So natives of where squash (drink) is common…how did it get it’s name? I await to be enlightened while sipping my Ribena.
Thank you. That’s probably the best “as close as we can get” answer without actually getting an answer.
Might be one for /askhistorians on Reddit.
If you are going to pose the question to a more academic circle I’d advise specificity. “When was the word ‘squash’ first used to denote a beverage?” is a good question, or even “How did squash turn from an alcoholic drink to the nonalcoholic drink base we know of today?”; My uneducated guess is the temperance movement may have had a hand in that.
All good points. Thank you.