Stash

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /stæʃ/

Definitions

1. To covertly store an assortment of items for future needs
2. To hide items in a place that is not easily found for later use
3. To keep possessions concealed in a safe or hidden location to protect or save them

Etymology: The most striking thing about "stash" is that its origin is genuinely uncertain. One proposal is that it blends "stick" with "cache," the French-derived word for a hidden store, so that a stash would be something stuck away out of sight. Another suggests a blend of "stow" and "cache." Neither explanation has been firmly established, and the word's exact ancestry remains a matter of informed guesswork. A separate and more surprising claim concerns the word "mustache." Here "stash" appears as a clipped form of that word, produced by dropping the opening syllable "mu-" in an process called apheresis. The connection is hard to picture at first, since a moustache and a hiding place seem unrelated, but the two words share only a sound pattern, not a meaning, and the clipping is a separate development from the sense of hiding things.

Synonyms: store, cache, hoard, supply, reserve

Antonyms: disperse, distribute, use up, spend, consume