crash

I. vb

1.

to go to sleep, lie down and lose con-sciousness. This word was very popular in the hippy era, perhaps because the suggestion of sudden collapse coincided with drug-induced sleep or simply curling up on a floor exhausted. Crash sounded rather dated by the late 1990s; it origi-nated in armed-services slang in World War II, probably among airmen, and was adopted by bohemian travellers and beatniks during the 1950s.

2.

to gatecrash. A word made especially popular by the teenage custom (from the 1960s onward) of arriving uninvited at parties.

3.

British

to cadge, borrow or lend. In use among working-class speakers and members of the armed services in the 1950s, this term became popular among adolescents in the 1990s. It is heard par-ticularly in the Scottish Lowlands and the north of England.

► Can you crash me a tenner? I just wanted to crash a couple of biffs.

II. adj

excellent, attractive, exciting. In this sense, fashionable since 2000, the word may be a shortening of crash-hot or an unrelated coinage.