What does crushed mean?
Crushed is the past tense and past participle of the verb 'crush' and also functions as an adjective in its own right. In its literal sense, it describes something that has been pressed or squeezed with great force — a can crushed flat, garlic cloves crushed into a paste, or ice crushed for a cocktail. Figuratively, it describes a person overcome by disappointment, rejection, or loss, as in 'she was crushed by the news'. A third common use conveys decisive defeat, whether in sport, business, or war, where one side is said to have been crushed by the other. The word's forceful physical origins give its figurative senses real emotional weight: to be crushed suggests not mild sadness but a blow that flattens the spirit, much as pressure flattens a physical object. It appears across registers, from recipes and engineering reports to novels and everyday conversation, making it a versatile and vivid addition to any vocabulary.
Past tense and past participle of crush: to have pressed or squeezed something forcefully so as to break, damage, or flatten it, or to have overwhelmed someone physically or emotionally.
"The rebellion was crushed within weeks."
Regular inflection of the verb crush.
Describing something reduced by pressure to a flatter, finer, or broken form, or a person feeling intensely disappointed or devastated.
"Serve over crushed ice."
In emotional contexts, usually predicative ('she felt crushed') rather than attributive.
From crushed ice in your drink to a crushed spirit after heartbreak, this one little word does heavy lifting both in the kitchen and in the heart.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of crushed
Crushed derives from the verb 'crush', which entered English in the late Middle English period, probably through Old French forms such as 'croissir'. The ultimate origin is generally considered Germanic, and the word may be related to 'crust'. Its figurative sense of overwhelming someone emotionally developed naturally from the physical sense of applying destructive force, and the participial adjective has been well established in English for centuries.
Related word forms
How crushed is actually used
As an adjective describing emotion ('feeling crushed'), the word is informal-to-neutral and carries strong connotations of sudden, deep disappointment. In literal uses it appears constantly in culinary and industrial contexts (crushed garlic, crushed ice, crushed stone), where it is entirely neutral.
Easily confused with crushed
'Cruhed' is not an English word; the confusion arises only as a misspelling of 'crushed'.