You know, I'm hearing the word “squish” more and more as it relates to liberal Republicans. For example, it’s typical for fiscal conservatives to say something like, "that guy is a tax-hiking squish." The adjective form of the word can be used as, “He’s so squishy for raising my taxes.”

And you know what? I'm loving it. It's a great word. It's like the more delicate offspring of "RINO".

What's intriguing is that the dictionary doesn't really treat it as a noun. Instead, it's largely considered a verb with the synonyms, "squash", "squelch", and "suck". The intransitive verb usage is characterized as, "their wet tennis shoes squished".

Click here to hear "squish" pronounced.

This could all mean that the word's noun definition was most likely created, or at least popularized, by the political right. And I suspect that its creation was post-2004, just judging from personal experience. Is it possible for an experienced wordsmith out there to seek its etymology?

I believe the main attraction to “squish” is that it’s an incredibly rich and descriptive word. When you use it to describe a liberal Republican, one gets the sense that the person is malleable and willowy; someone who doesn’t stand for the strong, concrete principles of lower taxes and limited government. When you think of a person being squishy, your mind doesn’t conjure up the images of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Instead, you immediately think of someone who puts principles aside so that he can “get things done” by “working across the aisle”.

Even better, I think the word is soft and easy going. It’s not harsh or abrasive like “RINO” can be. “Squish” carries a negative connotation, no doubt, but it’s a light-hearted word, which makes it all the more popular. People don’t like to use words that carry so much shock value that they get embarrassed. With “squish”, you’re describing a person as if matter-of-factly.

What's equally fun when talking about the word "squish" is to reflect on how the English language itself continues to evolve. Free market economist F.A. Hayek was famous for talking about "spontaneous order", that hard-to-define, yet simple, phenomenon which allows new ideas and inventions to realize themselves without any command and control from the government.

The free market is what spontaneous order is all about, since it allows anybody with an idea to realize fame and fortune if they work hard enough. But spontaneous order can be applied to language as well. There is no government mandate on how people speak. Government bureaucrats don't issue a weekly report on the creation of new words and the death of old, archiac words. The government also doesn't arrest people who "violate" the language by saying words incorrectly. Rather, new words are “invented” all the time with the good ones receiving popularity and the bad ones never making it out of the gate.

I suspect that “squish” was invented accidentally, just like when Charles Goodyear accidentally invented vulcanized rubber. Some frustrated fiscal conservative probably was for a loss of words when he said, “That guy is a…he’s a…squish.”

What will be the progeny of “squish”? What word will be “Squish 2.0”? Who knows, but it will be fun to find out. And it will be fun to see what the squishes plan to call fiscal conservatives when words like “zealots”, “radicals”, and “wingnuts” die off.

UPDATE (3:07pm): It appears that "squish" as a political term has been around for a while. Club Intern Genevieve found this definition of "squish" on Wiktionary: "a political moderate (derogatory term used by conservative activists in the 1980s)"