DCHP-1 Online

slash ((n.))

• 1a n. Hist. a tract of land prepared for clearing in this way.

  See also: slashing (def. 1b)  

  • 1825  (1916)  . . . we have been here scarce three months and there is a great slash.
  • 1840  The first quarter of a mile lay through a very rough slash. . . .
  • 1849  After various difficulties . . . getting with our horses into "slashes" or parts of the forest cut down . . . we at last reached the small wooden hostel. . . .
  • 1959  My Grandmother Campbell was brave and bonny. She could work in the slash with the men and rush home a few minutes early to prepare the bannocks and bacon.

• 1b n. the felled trees, brush, etc. on a piece of land in process of being cleared.

  See also: slashing (def. 1c)  

  • 1841  To end of month clearing up old "slash," which term has previously been defined.
  • 1917  In Quebec and British Columbia, settlers who desire to burn their slash must now obtain permits from the Government forest ranger, who supervises the burning. . . .
  • 1944  They cleared, stumped and ploughed three quarters of the eight hundred acres, and burned huge pyramids of slash and trunks that lit the autumn skies at night. . . .
  • 1954  "Late in the fall he piled the old dry slash from his choppin's around the stumps, and set it afire, and burned the stumps off."

• 1c n. a tract of land from which trees have been cleared for a townsite.

  • 1961  In 1912, there was nothing there [Usk, B.C.] except a slash along the Skeena River and construction of the right-of-way of the Grand Trunk Pacific. . . .

• 2 n. downed timber and other debris left in a forest by wind and storm.

  See also: slashing (def. 2)  windfall (def. 2)  

  • 1920  I figured that by the time I hit the bush I could see in the distance, I should have covered at least two miles of the goldarnedest blowdowns, slash and other debris that a man ever set eyes on.
  • 1942  "Ye can strike a spark there that'll set the whole province aflame like a fire in dry slash. . . ."
  • 1965  Cougars travel over long ranges and are found in various ecological types of terrain such as slash, mature forest and second growth.

• 3a n. Lumbering a tract of land littered with debris following logging operations.

  See also: timber slash  

  • 1923  . . . raspberries are found oftenest in what are called "slashes" in the woods, where the older timber has been cut down, and the new has not yet grown up to replace it.
  • 1956  . . . there'd been some damage from fire in the old slash afterward.
  • 1963  The rolling hills along the Kootenay, Bull and Elk rivers are parklike with their copses of fir, tamarack, poplar and willow . . . left standing in old log slashes or burns.

• 3b n. the debris left after a logging operation.

  See also: slashing (def. 4)  

  • 1945  The timber-maker did not fell a tree to save it from fire--rather he left "slash" in the forest which greatly increased the risk of fire.
  • 1966  . . . it has been a common practice to burn slash . . . ever since the introduction of high-lead logging.

• 4 n. Hockey an instance of slashing (def. 4).

  See also: slashing (def. 4)  

  • 1965  . . . press box witnesses saw the infraction as more of a hook or slash.