Word.ws English Dictionary

bury the hatchet

bury the hatchet verb: to cease fighting or arguing; to reach an agreement, or at least a truce.

Verb

bury the hatchet (third-person singular simple present buries the hatchet, present participle burying the hatchet, simple past and past participle buried the hatchet)

  1. (idiomatic) To cease fighting or arguing; to reach an agreement, or at least a truce.
    • They need to calm down and bury the hatchet before someone gets hurt.
  2. (humorous, slang) To accidentally leave a surgical instrument inside the patient after an operation.

bury the hatchet meaning in Tamil and Arabic

bury the hatchet in Tamil

பகையைப் புதை, பகையை மறந்து சமாதானமாகு, பகையை விட்டு ஒன்று சேர்

bury the hatchet in Arabic

to stop fighting or arguing
دَفَنَ الأَحْقَادَ dafana l-ʔaḥqāda

Antonyms of bury the hatchet

Forms of bury the hatchet

third-person singular presentburies the hatchet
present participleburying the hatchet
past participleburied the hatchet
pastburied the hatchet

Origin of bury the hatchet

The phrase is an allusion to the figurative or literal practice of putting away the tomahawk at the cessation of hostilities among or by Native Americans in the Eastern United States, specifically during the formation of the Iroquois Confederacy, and in Iroquois custom in general. Weapons were to be buried or otherwise cached in time of peace.

Questions about bury the hatchet

What does bury the hatchet mean?
Bury the hatchet means to cease fighting or arguing; to reach an agreement, or at least a truce.
What is bury the hatchet in Tamil?
Bury the hatchet in Tamil is பகையைப் புதை, பகையை மறந்து சமாதானமாகு, பகையை விட்டு ஒன்று சேர். See Bury the hatchet meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is bury the hatchet?
Bury the hatchet is a verb.
What is the past tense of bury the hatchet?
The past tense of bury the hatchet is buried the hatchet.

Words near bury the hatchet in the dictionary

  1. Burwood East
  2. Burwood Heights
  3. bury
  4. bury one's head in the sand
  5. Bury St Edmunds
  6. bury the hatchet
  7. bury the lead
  8. bury the lede
  9. bury your gays
  10. buryable
  11. buryal

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bury the hatchet (page history and authors); bury the hatchet (Tamil 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-bury the hatchet.wav.

Cite this entry: “bury the hatchet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bury_the_hatchet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.