dash

When you dash, you run a short distance very quickly. If you forget your lunch in the morning, you might try to dash home, grab it, and dash back to school.

This word can be used in many ways. When your dog chases your cat, they dash around the house — and you can call this sprint itself a dash. When you use the punctuation mark known as a dash, you write a horizontal line ( — ) to mark a pause, a change, or an omitted word. As a verb, dash can also mean to destroy, as when unusually warm weather dashes your hopes of a snowy holiday, or to smash, as when you dash a coconut against a rock to break it open.