This just in: word origins may help explain resistance to eating squash

The origin of the word squash, as a vegetable, is askutasquash, a noun of the Narangansett tribe first noted in 1634, presumably in Plymouth, Massachusetts. I wonder how it sounded when the natives pronounced it and when the Puritans started to abbreviate it.

Squash as a verb has, of course, a completely different root than squash, the vegetable: consider the Middle English verb squachen, to beat into a pulp or flat mass. Then we have the word squashy, meaning easily squashed, softly wet, or boggy. (Thanks to Merriam Webster's, 2006.)

Who would willingly eat something that evokes squishy, boggy, softly wet? Why, babies, of course, who don't know any better. Is this why some older children and middle schoolers won't touch baked, roasted or mashed squash? Or is there something in squash itself that repels them?

All of this reminds me of anthropological studies of clean and unclean foods. But, I will stop here.