masher

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a utensil or machine used to crush food or another material into a soft mass

   She used a potato masher to break the cooked vegetables into a smooth mixture.

2. 2
   noun

   dated slang: a fashionable man who aggressively flirts with or makes unwelcome advances to women

   The novel mocks the idle mashers who crowded the bars and music halls.

The tool sense is transparently mash + -er. The dated social sense arose in late nineteenth-century slang alongside mash, 'an infatuation or flirtation'; it denoted a would-be ladies' man, often one who accosted unfamiliar women. That historical sense fits Wells's list of bar loafers and mashers.

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