hatchet

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English[edit]

A wooden-handled hatchet.

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English hachet, a borrowing from Old French hachete, diminutive of hache (“axe”), from Vulgar Latin *happia, from Frankish *happjā, from Proto-Germanic *hapjǭ, *habjǭ (“knife”), from Proto-Indo-European *kop- (“to strike, to beat”). Cognate with Old High German happa, heppa, habba (“reaper, sickle”), German Hippe (“billhook”). Mostly displaced native Old English handæx, whence Modern English hand axe.

Pronunciation[edit]

  • IPA(key): /ˈhæt͡ʃɪt/
  • Audio (Southern England)(file)
  • Rhymes: -ætʃɪt

Noun[edit]

hatchet (plural hatchets)

  1. A small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk.
    • 1855 November 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Blessing the Corn-fields”, in The Song of Hiawatha, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 175:
      Buried was the bloody hatchet, / Buried was the dreadful war-club, / Buried were all warlike weapons, / And the war-cry was forgotten.
    • 2016 April 9, Philip Oltermann, “Michael Hofmann: ‘English is basically a trap. It’s almost a language for spies’”, in The Guardian‎[1], →ISSN:
      The savagery with which Michael Hofmann can wield a hatchet has earned him unlikely fans outside the literary circuit. A recent issue of Viz ran a cartoon of the critic, poet and translator urinating all over a phone booth, while two donnish FR Leavis types nodded appreciatively from a safe distance.

Derived terms[edit]

Translations[edit]

Verb[edit]

hatchet (third-person singular simple present hatchets, present participle hatcheting or hatchetting, simple past and past participle hatcheted or hatchetted)

  1. (transitive) To cut with a hatchet.
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