Slang dictionary
stashing
or stasher or stashed [stash-ing]
What does stashing mean?
Have you ever been romantically involved with someone but never met any of their friends or family or have never even been featured on their social media? If so, you might be the victim of聽stashing, or when a partner hides another from friends and family and from their social media.
Stash also often refers to weed, drugs, alcohol, candy … anything you’d hide away because of embarrassment, greed, or, you know, the law.
Where does stashing come from?
Stashing is credited to Ellen Scott in a column for the UK tabloid聽惭别迟谤辞听in August 2017. The name comes from the fact that one partner in the relationship is concealing the other from the rest of their life, they have聽stashed the other away.
Scott discussed stashing as a dating phenomenon鈥攁nd one that really hurts the stashed person’s self-worth. After the article, many other popular publications, such as Cosmopolitan, picked up on stashing as a dating buzzword (kind of like聽ghosting and cuffing).
Why would anyone do this? Well, stasher reasoning includes:
- wanting to keep their options open
- being embarrassed to be seen with their partner
- viewing the partner as temporary
- concern about the reaction of friends and families based on religious or cultural differences
For the聽person being stashed聽these may all be good reasons to get out of the relationship … fair warning.
Examples of stashing
Who uses stashing?
Stashing joins a recent crop of buzzwords, like cuffing, that tend to come up in modern dating blogs and articles. Stashing especially refers to when a partner excludes the other from their social media, making it a more relevant term in the era of digital romance.
Are you being in your relationship? Don't let emotional abusers define your :
— Mary Jo Rapini (@maryjorapini)
Getting stashed? A biological anthropologist explains why the 'stashing' phenomenon happens in
— CBC Life (@cbc_life)
Stashers appear less likely to use the word, as the whole point is secrecy (and denial).聽Stashees, however, may rightly feel aggrieved when they realize they’ve been stashed away from their partner’s wider world.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of stashing like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of stashing that will help our users expand their word mastery.