Word.ws English Dictionary

hatch

/hæt͡ʃ/

hatch noun: a horizontal door in a floor or ceiling.

hatch: a horizontal door in a floor or ceiling
Image: National Weather Service - La Crosse, Wisconsin, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

hatch (plural hatches)

  1. A horizontal door in a floor or ceiling.
    • Moving the wardrobe revealed a previously hidden hatch in the ground.
  2. A trapdoor.
  3. An opening in a wall at window height for the purpose of serving food or other items. A pass through.
    • The cook passed the dishes through the serving hatch.
    • A service hatch with sliding shutter is situated at the end of the kitchen next to the dining compartment.1950 June, “New Restaurant and Buffet Cars, G.N.R.(I.)”, in Railway Magazine, page 415
  4. A small door in large mechanical structures and vehicles such as aircraft and spacecraft often provided for access for maintenance.
    • A surprising number of incidents is due to roof hatches being left loose or in the raised position when locomotives return to service after maintenance. On one occasion, a 25kV overhead line was damaged by an open hatch.1963 February, “Diesel locomotive faults and their remedies”, in Modern Railways, page 100
  5. An opening through the deck of a ship or submarine
  6. (slang) A gullet.
  7. A frame or weir in a river, for catching fish.
  8. A floodgate; a sluice gate.
    • The farmers lower down the brook pull up the hatches to let the flood pass.1879, Richard Jeffries, Wild Life in a Southern County
  9. (Scotland) A bedstead.
    • It consisted of a rude wooden stool , and still ruder hatch or bed-frame1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co....
  10. An opening into, or in search of, a mine.

Verb (1)

hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)

  1. (transitive) To close with a hatch or hatches.
    • 'Twere not amiss to keep our door hatched.c. 1607–1608 (date written), William Shakespeare, [George Wilkins?], The Late, and Much Admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. […], London: […] [William White and Thomas Creede] for Henry...

Verb (2)

hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)

  1. (intransitive) To emerge from an egg.
    • These three chicks hatched yesterday morning.
  2. (intransitive) To break open when a young animal emerges from it.
    • She was delighted when she heard the crackling sound of the eggs hatching.
  3. (transitive) To incubate eggs; to cause to hatch.
    • I'm hatching this mysterious egg I found in the forest.
  4. (transitive) To devise (a plot or scheme).
    • World domination was only one of the evil schemes he had hatched over the years.
    • As for Cersei, pretending to work with her enemies while secretly hatching some grander scheme was pretty much what I expected for the truce going into it.2017 August 27, Brandon Nowalk, “Game Of Thrones slows down for the longest, and best, episode of the season (newbies)”, in The Onion AV Club
    Synonyms:
    hatch up

Noun (2)

hatch (plural hatches)

  1. The act of hatching.
  2. (figuratively) Development; disclosure; discovery.
    • There's ſomething in his ſoule? / O'er which his Melancholly ſits on brood, / And I do doubt the hatch, and the diſcloſe / Will be ſome danger, which to preuent / I haue in quicke determinationc. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac...
  3. (poultry) A group of birds that emerged from eggs at a specified time.
    • These pullets are from an April hatch.
  4. (often) The phenomenon, lasting 1–2 days, of large clouds of mayflies appearing in one location to mate, having reached maturity.
    • a. 1947, Edward R. Hewitt, quoted in 1947, Charles K. Fox, Redistribution of the Green Drake, 1997, Norm Shires, Jim Gilford (editors), Limestone Legends, page 104,
      The Willowemoc above Livington Manor had the largest mayfly hatch I ever knew about fifty years ago.
    • The major application of the parachute is for mayfly hatches, but it's also useful for midge hatches.2004, Ed Engle, Fishing Small Flies, page 118
  5. (informal) A birth, the birth records (in the newspaper).
    • hatch, match, and dispatch

Verb (3)

hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)

  1. (transitive) To shade an area of (a drawing, diagram, etc.) with fine parallel lines, or with lines which cross each other (crosshatch).
    • Those hatching strokes of the pencil.1695, C[harles] A[lphonse] du Fresnoy, translated by John Dryden, De Arte Graphica. The Art of Painting, […], London: […] J[ohn] Heptinstall for W. Rogers, […], →OCLC
    • Shall win this sword, silvered and hatched.[1611?], Homer, “(please specify |book=I to XXIV)”, in Geo[rge] Chapman, transl., The Iliads of Homer Prince of Poets. […], London: […] Nathaniell Butter, →OCLC; republished as The Iliads of Homer...
  2. (obsolete, transitive) To cross; to spot; to stain; to steep.
    • His weapon hatch'd in blood.1619, John Fletcher, “The Humorous Lieutenant”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act I, scene i

Proper noun capitalized: Hatch

Hatch

  1. A surname.

hatch meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

hatch in Hindi

हैच, हैच करें

hatch in Tamil

குஞ்சு பொரித்தல்

hatch in Marathi

हॅच

hatch in Urdu

چھوٹا دروازہ, نسل بڑھانا, نسل کشی کرنا, نکالنا, پرورش دینا, انڈے سینا
More languagesFewer languages
hatch in Bengali
ডিম ফোটানো, পরিকল্পনা করা, জাহাজের পাটাতনের মুখ
hatch in Telugu
హచ్, హాచ్
hatch in Malayalam
വിരിയിക്കുക viriyikkuka, ജാലകം jālakaṁ
hatch in Kannada
ಬಾಗಿಲು, ಕದ, ಕಾವುಕೊಡು, ಮರಿಮಾಡು
hatch in Punjabi
ਹੈਚ, ਹੱਚ
hatch in Odia
ହ୍ଯ଼ାଚ୍, ହଚ୍, ହ୍ଯ଼ାଚ୍ କରିବା ପାଇଁ
hatch in Assamese
ফুটা phuta
hatch in Nepali
ह्याच, हच
hatch in Arabic
حَضَنَ ḥaḍana
hatch in Indonesian
palka
hatch in Thai
ฟัก fák
hatch in Vietnamese
nở

Examples of hatch in a sentence

  • An idiomatic phrase that warns us against Pollyannaism is "don't count your chickens before they're hatched".
  • It's time to batten down the hatches and prepare for the coming challenge.
  • The passengers escaped through the hatch one by one.

All 40 example sentences with hatch

Synonyms of hatch

Forms of hatch

Noun
pluralhatches
Verb
third-person singular presenthatches
present participlehatching
past participlehatched
pasthatched

Past tense of hatch: hatched

Plural of hatch: hatches

Origin of hatch

From Middle English hacche, hache, from Old English hæċ, from Proto-West Germanic *hakkju (compare Dutch hek ‘gate, railing’, Low German Heck ‘pasture gate, farmyard gate’), variant of *haggju ‘hedge’. More at hedge.

From Middle English hacche, hacchen (“to propagate”), from Old English *hæċċan, āhaċċian (“to peck out; hatch”), from Proto-Germanic *hakjaną. Cognate with German hecken ‘to breed, spawn’, Danish hække (“to hatch”), Swedish häcka (“to breed”); akin to Latvian kakale ‘penis’.

From Middle French hacher (“to chop, slice up, incise with fine lines”), from Old French hacher, hachier, from Frankish *hakōn, *hakkōn, from Proto-Germanic *hakkōną (“to chop; hack”). More at hack.

Words formed from hatch

Phrases with hatch

Words that rhyme with hatch

16 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about hatch

What does hatch mean?
Hatch means a horizontal door in a floor or ceiling.
What is hatch in Hindi?
Hatch in Hindi is हैच, हैच करें. See Hatch meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is hatch?
Hatch can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce hatch?
Hatch is pronounced /hæt͡ʃ/.
What is the plural of hatch?
The plural of hatch is hatches.

Words near hatch in the dictionary

  1. hatboxes
  2. hatbrim
  3. hatbrims
  4. hatbrush
  5. hatbrushes
  6. hatch
  7. Hatch Beauchamp
  8. Hatch End
  9. hatch out
  10. hatch up
  11. hatch, match and despatch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hatch (page history and authors); Hatch (page history and authors); hatch (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hatch (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hatch (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hatch (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); Hatch (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hatch (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); ജാലകം (Malayalam) (page history and authors); hatch (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hatch (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hatch (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hatch (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: En-au-hatch.ogg.

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