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brake: brake: There are two distinct words brake in English. By far the older is that meaning ‘overgrown area, thicket’ [OE]. Its source is uncertain, but it has been speculated that it is ultimately related to break, its original meaning perhaps having been something like ‘broken wood’. Brake ‘decelerating mechanism’ [15] meant ‘bridle’ for stopping a horse’s progress, and may have been borrowed from Middle Dutch braeke, a word which was used for a wide variety of crushing implements but also apparently for a ring put through the nose of a draught ox. There may well be some ultimate connection with break here too.
=> break
grind: grind: [OE] Grind is part of the ancient Indo- European word-stock. Relatives such as Latin frendere ‘crush’ and Lithuanian grendu ‘rub’ point back to an Indo-European *ghrendh-. This perhaps denoted ‘crushing’ rather than what we would today call ‘grinding’; for in earliest times grain was crushed rather than ground to produce meal. The connotations of the word seem to have changed in step with advances in grainpulverizing technology. (The same is true, incidentally, in the case of Indo-European *mel-, which produced the majority of modern European words for ‘grind’, from German mahlen and Spanish moler to Russian molot’, and also gave English meal, mill, molar, etc.) Grist [OE] was formed from the same base as produced grind, and until the 15th century meant simply ‘grinding’.
=> grist
jam: jam: [18] The verb jam, meaning ‘press tightly together’, first appears in the early 18th century (the earliest-known unequivocal example of its transitive use is in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe 1719: ‘The ship stuck fast, jaum’d in between two rocks’). It is not known where it came from, but it is generally assumed to be imitative or symbolic in some way of the effort of pushing.

Equally mysterious are the origins of jam the sweet substance spread on bread, which appeared around the same time. Contemporary etymologists were nonplussed (Nathan Bailey had a stab in the 1730s: ‘prob. of J’aime, i.e. I love it; as Children used to say in French formerly, when they liked any Thing’; but Dr Johnson in 1755 confessed ‘I know not whence derived’); and even today the best guess that can be made is that the word refers to the ‘jamming’ or crushing of fruit into jars.
juggernaut: juggernaut: [17] Hindi Jagganath is a title of Krishna, one of the avatars, or incarnations, of the god Vishnu, the Preserver. It comes from Sanskrit Jagganātha, a compound of jagat- ‘world’ and nāthás ‘lord’. It is applied also to a large wagon on which an image of the god is carried in procession (notably in an annual festival in Puri, a town in the northeastern Indian state of Orissa).

It used to be said, apocryphally, that worshippers of Krishna threw themselves under the wheels of the wagon in an access of religious ecstasy, and so juggernaut came to be used metaphorically in English for an ‘irresistible crushing force’: ‘A neighbouring people were crushed beneath the worse than Jaggernaut car of wild and fierce democracy’, J W Warter, Last of the Old Squires 1854.

The current application to large heavy lorries is prefigured as long ago as 1841 in William Thackeray’s Second Funeral of Napoleon (‘Fancy, then, the body landed at day-break and transferred to the car; and fancy the car, a huge Juggernaut of a machine’); but it did not become firmly established until the late 1960s.
toil: toil: English has two words toil, one of them now used only in the plural. Toil ‘work’ comes via Anglo-Norman toiler ‘stir, agitate, wrangle’ from Latin tudiculāre ‘stir around’. This was derived from tudicula ‘mill for crushing olives’, a diminutive form of tudes ‘hammer’, which went back to the prehistoric base *tud- ‘hit’, source also of Latin tundere ‘beat, crush’, which gave English abstruse, protrude, etc. Toils ‘entanglements’ represents a plural use of the now archaic toil ‘net’ [16].

This denoted etymologically ‘something woven’: it came via Old French toile from Latin tēla, a contraction of an earlier *texlā, which was derived from the base *tex- ‘weave’ (source of English text, textile, etc). Toilet [16] was borrowed from French toilette, a diminutive form of toile. It originally meant ‘cloth cover’, but it gradually evolved via ‘cloth cover for a dressing table’ to ‘the act of dressing and grooming oneself’.

The sense ‘lavatory’ emerged in mid 19th-century America, from the now obsolete ‘dressing room (with lavatory attached)’, inspired no doubt by the same delicacy that produced American English bathroom ‘lavatory’. Another member of the same word-family is tiller [15], which came via Anglo-Norman telier ‘weaver’s beam’ from medieval Latin tēlārium, a derivative of tēla.
=> abstruse, protrude; technical, text, textile, texture, tiller, tissue, toilet
Waterloo: Waterloo: [19] The decisive battle at which the army of Napoleon was finally defeated by British, Dutch, and Prussian forces was fought just outside the village of Waterloo, near Brussels in Belgium, on 18 June 1815. The word Waterloo soon came to be used metaphorically for a ‘final and crushing defeat, something that puts one hors de combat for ever’. The first record of this new application comes in a letter written in 1816 by Lord Byron to his friend Thomas Moore: ‘It [Armenian] is … a Waterloo of an Alphabet’.
anarchy (n.): 1530s, from French anarchie or directly from Medieval Latin anarchia, from Greek anarkhia "lack of a leader, the state of people without a government" (in Athens, used of the Year of Thirty Tyrants, 404 B.C., when there was no archon), noun of state from anarkhos "rulerless," from an- "without" (see an- (1)) + arkhos "leader" (see archon).
Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is ... death! Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement. The choice lies with you! [Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)]
brake (n.1): mid-15c., "instrument for crushing or pounding," from Middle Dutch braeke "flax brake," from breken "to break" (see break (v.)). The word was applied to many crushing implements and to the ring through the nose of a draught ox. It was influenced in sense by Old French brac, a form of bras "an arm," thus "a lever or handle," which was being used in English from late 14c., and applied to "a bridle or curb" from early 15c. One or the other or both took up the main modern meaning of "stopping device for a wheel," first attested 1772.
contusion (n.): c. 1400, from Middle French contusion, from Latin contusionem (nominative contusio) "crushing, bruising," from contus-, past participle stem of contundere "to beat, break to pieces," from com-, intensive prefix (see com-), + tundere "to beat" (see obtuse).
crush (v.): mid-14c., from Old French cruissir (Modern French écraser), variant of croissir "to gnash (teeth), crash, break," perhaps from Frankish *krostjan "to gnash" (cognates: Gothic kriustan, Old Swedish krysta "to gnash"). Figurative sense of "to humiliate, demoralize" is c. 1600. Related: Crushed; crushing. Italian crosciare, Catalan cruxir, Spanish crujirare "to crack" are Germanic loan-words.
crush (n.): 1590s, "act of crushing," from crush (v.). Meaning "thick crowd" is from 1806. Sense of "person one is infatuated with" is first recorded 1884; to have a crush on is from 1913.
grind (v.): Old English grindan "to rub together, crush into powder, grate, scrape," forgrindan "destroy by crushing" (class III strong verb; past tense grand, past participle grunden), from Proto-Germanic *grindanan (cognates: Dutch grenden), related to ground, from PIE *ghrendh- "to grind" (cognates: Latin frendere "to gnash the teeth," Greek khondros "corn, grain," Lithuanian grendu "to scrape, scratch"). Meaning "to make smooth or sharp by friction" is from c. 1300. Most other Germanic languages use a verb cognate with Latin molere (compare Dutch malen, Old Norse mala, German mahlen).
masher (n.): "thing that mashes," c. 1500, agent noun from mash (v.). Meaning "would-be lady-killer" is from 1875, American English, perhaps in use from 1860, probably from mash (v.) on notion either of "pressing one's attentions," or of "crushing someone else's emotions" (compare crush).
He was, to use a Western expression, a 'regular heart-smasher among the women; and it may not be improper to state, just here, that no one had a more exalted opinion of his capabilities in that line than the aforesaid 'Jo' himself. ["Harper's New Monthly Magazine," March 1861]

He had a weakness to be considered a regular masher of female hearts and a very wicked young man with the fair sex generally, but there was not a well-authenticated instance of his ever having broken a heart in his life, nor likely to be one. [Gilbert A. Pierce, "Zachariah, The Congressman," Chicago, 1880]
Also in use late 19c were mash (n.) "a romantic fixation, crush" (1884); mash (v.) "excite sentimental admiration" (1882); mash-note "love letter" (1890).
quern (n.): Old English cweorn "hand-mill, mill," from PIE *gwere-na- "millstone" (cognates: Old Norse kvern, Old Frisian quern, Old High German quirn, Gothic quirnus; Sanskrit grava "crushing stone;" Lithuanian girna "millstone," girnos "hand mills;" Old Church Slavonic zrunuvi "mills;" Welsh brevan "hand mill"), suffixed form of root *gwere- (2) "heavy" (see grave (adj.)).
smash (v.): 1759, "break to pieces," earlier "kick downstairs" (c. 1700), probably of imitative origin (compare smack (v.), mash (v.), crush (v.)). Meaning "act with crushing force" is from 1813; that of "strike violently" is from 1835. Tennis sense is from 1882. Smash-and-grab (adj.) is first attested 1927.
smashing (adj.): 1833, "violently crushing to pieces," present participle adjective from smash (v.). Meaning "pleasing, sensational" is from 1911. Related: Smashingly.
squelch (v.): 1620s, "to fall, drop, or stomp (on something soft) with crushing force," possibly imitative of sound made in the process. The figurative sense of "suppress completely" is first recorded 1864. Related: Squelched; squelching.
stamp (n.): mid-15c., "instrument for crushing, stamping tool," from stamp (v.). Especially "instrument for making impressions" (1570s). Meaning "downward thrust or blow with the foot, act of stamping" is from 1580s. Sense of "official mark or imprint" (to certify that duty has been paid on what has been printed or written) dates from 1540s; transferred 1837 to designed, pre-printed adhesive labels issued by governments to serve the same purpose as impressed stamps. German Stempel "rubber stamp, brand, postmark" represents a diminutive form. Stamp-collecting is from 1862 (compare philately).
toil (n.1): "hard work," c. 1300, originally "turmoil, contention, dispute," from Anglo-French toil (13c.), from toiler "agitate, stir up, entangle, writhe about," from Old French toeillier "drag about, make dirty" (12c.), usually said to be from Latin tudiculare "crush with a small hammer," from tudicula "mill for crushing olives, instrument for crushing," from Latin tudes "hammer," from PIE *tud-, variant of *(s)teu- "to push, stroke, knock, beat" (see obtuse). Sense of "hard work, labor" (1590s) is from the related verb (see toil (v.)).
Waterloo (n.): village near Brussels; the great battle there took place June 18, 1815; extended sense of "a final, crushing defeat" is first attested 1816 in letter of Lord Byron. The second element in the place name is from Flemish loo "sacred wood."