Word.ws English Dictionary

batten down the hatches

batten down the hatches verb: to prepare for trouble.

Verb

batten down the hatches (third-person singular simple present battens down the hatches, present participle battening down the hatches, simple past and past participle battened down the hatches)

  1. (idiomatic) To prepare for trouble.
    • It's time to batten down the hatches and prepare for the coming challenge.

batten down the hatches meaning in Bengali

batten down the hatches in Bengali

বিপদের জন্য প্রস্তুতি নেওয়া

Forms of batten down the hatches

third-person singular presentbattens down the hatches
present participlebattening down the hatches
past participlebattened down the hatches
pastbattened down the hatches

Origin of batten down the hatches

From the practice aboard a ship of sealing hatches to prevent water getting below-decks in a storm by using covers secured by strips of material, called battens, firmly attached to the frame of the hatch opening.

Questions about batten down the hatches

What does batten down the hatches mean?
Batten down the hatches means to prepare for trouble.
What is batten down the hatches in Bengali?
Batten down the hatches in Bengali is বিপদের জন্য প্রস্তুতি নেওয়া. See Batten down the hatches meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is batten down the hatches?
Batten down the hatches is a verb.
What is the past tense of batten down the hatches?
The past tense of batten down the hatches is battened down the hatches.

Words near batten down the hatches in the dictionary

  1. battement
  2. battements
  3. batten
  4. Batten disease
  5. batten down
  6. batten down the hatches
  7. battenberg
  8. Battenberg cake
  9. Battenberg cakes
  10. Battenberg lace
  11. Battenberg laces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: batten down the hatches (page history and authors); batten down the hatches (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-batten down the hatches.ogg.

Cite this entry: “batten down the hatches.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/batten_down_the_hatches. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.