What’s the origin of the phrase ‘Dash to pieces’?
Many English phrases are found first in either the Bible or the works of Shakespeare. ‘Dash to pieces’ appears to be a close run race between the two. The Coverdale Bible, 1535, in Psalms 2.9, has:
Thou shalt rule them with a rodde of yron, and breake them in peces like an erthen vessell.
‘Dash’ was a commonly used verb in the 16th century meaning variously ‘crash up against’, as in raining splashing against a window, or ‘destroy utterly’. Shakespeare brought both meanings together in the first known usage of ‘dash to pieces’, in The Tempest, 1610:
A brave vessel, who had, no doubt, some noble creature in her, dash’d all to pieces.
_
We no longer use ‘dash’ to mean break into pieces.
_
The biblical scholars who in 1610 were working on the King James Bible (1611) converted Coverdale’s ‘breake them in peces’ to ‘dash them in pieces’:
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.
There may yet be a steward’s enquiry but this one does seem to be ‘coined by Shakespeare’ - by a nose.
Incidentally, the ‘splattering of rain’ meaning of dash is also the origin of the term dashboard, which was originally the frontice board of a carriage, placed there to stop mud and rain splashing the occupants.