Grush

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To break something down into small pieces or powder by pressing or grinding it with force
2. To reduce a material to fragments by applying heavy pressure or friction against it
3. To crush or grind an object into fine particles, typically through rough mechanical action

Etymology: Few English verbs have coins for relatives, but this one does. Its source is the Hebrew "grúsh," a word built on the sense of "crushed" or "ground," and in its coin sense it passed through a chain of languages. Over the centuries, that single Hebrew term became the Turkish "kuruş," and it also reached European languages, where it gave rise to "groschen" and "grosz," the names of small silver coins. Because these forms came into European languages by different routes, they are called doublets: separate borrowings from one source that ended up looking and sounding different. The English verb "grush" belongs to the same family, although its own path into English is less clearly documented, so the coin meaning and the verb meaning should not be confused.