hatchet
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English[edit]
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]
Noun[edit]
hatchet (plural hatchets)
- A small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk.
- 1843, [James Fenimore Cooper], Wyandotté, or The Hutted Knoll. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 117:
- “It must be admitted, Nick, you are a very literal logician—‘dog won't eat dog,’ is our English saying. Still the Yankee will fight the Yengeese, it would seem. In a word, the Great Father, in England, has raised the hatchet against his American children.”
- 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.
- 1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter 3, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, part I, number 11, New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, February 1927, →OCLC, book I, page 1158:
- The fellow was armed with a stone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet. In his black hair were several gay-colored feathers.
- (figurative) Belligerence, animosity; harsh criticism.
- 1843, [James Fenimore Cooper], Wyandotté, or The Hutted Knoll. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 42:
- “Dat true as missionary! What a soldier do, cap'in, if so much peace? Warrior love a war-path.”
“I wish it were not so, Nick. But my hatchet is buried, I hope, for ever.”
- 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]
small axe
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Verb[edit]
hatchet (third-person singular simple present hatchets, present participle hatcheting or hatchetting, simple past and past participle hatcheted or hatchetted)
- (transitive) To cut with a hatchet.
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)kep-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Vulgar Latin
- English terms derived from Frankish
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English 2-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ætʃɪt
- Rhymes:English/ætʃɪt/2 syllables
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with quotations
- English terms with collocations
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- en:Weapons