Word.ws English Dictionary

burying the hatchet

burying the hatchet is the present participle and gerund of bury the hatchet.

Meaning of bury the hatchet

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.

Questions about burying the hatchet

What is burying the hatchet the present participle and gerund of?
Burying the hatchet is the present participle and gerund of bury the hatchet.

Words near burying the hatchet in the dictionary

  1. burying beetle
  2. burying beetles
  3. burying ground
  4. burying grounds
  5. burying one's head in the sand
  6. burying the hatchet
  7. burying the lede
  8. burying-ground
  9. burying-grounds
  10. buryingplace
  11. buryingplaces

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: burying the hatchet (page history and authors); bury the hatchet (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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Cite this entry: “burying the hatchet.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/burying_the_hatchet. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.