Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • intransitive verb To subdue forcibly.
  • intransitive verb To inhibit or suppress.
  • intransitive verb Archaic To crush by trampling.
  • intransitive verb To produce a splashing, squishing, or sucking sound, as when walking through ooze.
  • noun A squishing sound.
  • noun An electric circuit that cuts off a radio receiver when the signal is too weak for reception of anything but noise.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A crushing blow; a heavy fall.
  • To crush down; stamp on as if squeezing out something liquid; put an end to.
  • To disconcert; discomfit; put down.
  • To be crushed.
  • To make a sound like that produced by treading in mud.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A heavy fall, as of something flat.
  • noun colloq. A crushing reply.
  • transitive verb colloq. To quell; to crush; to silence or put down.
  • intransitive verb To make a sound like that made by the feet of one walking in mud or slush; to make a kind of swashing sound; to squish; also, to move with such a sound.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb transitive, US to halt, stop, eliminate, stamp out, or put down, often suddenly or by force
  • verb transitive, radio technology to suppress the unwanted hiss or static between received transmissions by adjusting the gain of your receiver.
  • verb intransitive, UK to make a sucking, splashing noise as when walking on muddy ground
  • verb intransitive, UK to walk or step through a substance such as mud
  • noun A squelching sound.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb to compress with violence, out of natural shape or condition
  • noun a crushing remark
  • verb make a sucking sound
  • verb suppress or crush completely
  • verb walk through mud or mire
  • noun an electric circuit that cuts off a receiver when the signal becomes weaker than the noise

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Probably imitative.]

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Examples

Comments

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  • squelch has a definite fruit-smashing or walking-through-muck sound to it.

    January 5, 2007

  • You're right V. Just saying this word pushes mud up between your toes.

    September 5, 2008

  • A homographic homophonic autoantonym that means to silence, or to make a (squishy) sound.

    January 29, 2013