Hashable = capable of being hashed.

Ok, what is hashing? A hashing function is a function which takes an object, say a string such as “Python,” and returns a fixed-size code. For simplicity, assume the return value is an integer.

When I run hash(‘Python’) in Python 3, I get 5952713340227947791 as the result. Different versions of Python are free to change the underlying hash function, so you will likely get a different value. The important thing is that no matter now many times I run hash(‘Python’), I’ll always get the same result with the same version of Python.

But hash(‘Java’) returns 1753925553814008565. So if the object I am hashing changes, so does the result. On the other hand, if the object I am hashing does not change, then the result stays the same.

Why does this matter?

Well, Python dictionaries, for example, require the keys to be immutable. That is, keys must be objects which do not change. Strings are immutable in Python, as are the other basic types (int, float, bool). Tuples and frozensets are also immutable. Lists, on the other hand, are not immutable (i.e., they are mutable) because you can change them. Similarly, dicts are mutable.

So when we say something is hashable, we mean it is immutable. If I try to pass a mutable type to the hash() function, it will fail:

Author: Dave Wade-Stein Source: What are hashable types in Python? - Quora

In summary, int, float, bool, str, tuple and forzensets are immutable/hashable; while dict and list are mutable (not hashable).