Learn English – the difference between squeeze and squash

'Squeeze' means to apply pressure or some kind of pushing/pressing force to something.

'Squash' means to apply so much pressure that the thing loses its original shape. It has the sense of making something flat. Usually (but not always) the original shape is permanently lost.

The main difference is that squeezing something doesn't necessarily mean altering its shape permanently, whereas squashing usually does. For example, you can squeeze an apple with your hand but it will probably retain its shape. But let's say a car rolled over that apple - now it would be squashed.

Another example is a tennis ball. You can squeeze it with your hand but you couldn't apply enough pressure to squash it with your hand. If you put it in a hydraulic press, you could squash the tennis ball temporarily into a flat shape, but it would revert to its original shape when the press was released.

In the case of a lemon, squeezing it means applying enough pressure to release the juice. You will probably change the shape of it but it wouldn't be flat. But if continue to keep applying a lot of force until the lemon now becomes flat, you could then technically say that you squashed the lemon. In fact, the word 'squash' in British English can also refer to a diluted juice drink. The concentrated fruit juice component was extracted by passing the fruit through a press - this action was more like squashing than squeezing, hence the name. Or so the theory goes.