The French have made a hash of the hashtag

‘So my poor wife rose by five o’clock in the morning, before day, and went to market and bought fowls and many other things for dinner, with which I was highly pleased,’ wrote Samuel Pepys on 13 January 1667. They were eight. ‘I had for them, after oysters, at first course, a hash of rabbits, a lamb and a rare chine of beef. Next a great dish of roasted fowl, cost me about 30s, and a tart, and then fruit and cheese. My dinner was noble and enough.’ My husband said he liked the sound of this and asked if I might manage something similar out of doors, for six, duly distanced. I noticed he had doodled in the margin of his Times #rabbits.

Hash sign shares an origin with rabbit hash, both being related to the French hacher, ‘cut in pieces’. The French for ‘axe’ is hache. Also related is hatch, to make lines that artists such as Michael Heath use for shading.