Word.ws English Dictionary

hatchet

/ˈhæt͡ʃɪt/

hatchet noun: a small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk.

hatchet: a small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk
Image: Simon A. Eugster, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

hatchet (plural hatchets)

  1. A small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk.
    • “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.”1843, [James Fenimore Cooper], Wyandotté, or The Hutted Knoll. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 117
    • Buried was the bloody hatchet, / Buried was the dreadful war-club, / Buried were all warlike weapons, / And the war-cry was forgotten.1855 November 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Blessing the Corn-fields”, in The Song of Hiawatha, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 175
  2. (figuratively) Belligerence, animosity; harsh criticism.
    • to bury the hatchet
    • hatchet job

Verb

hatchet (third-person singular simple present hatchets, present participle hatcheting or (rare) hatchetting, simple past and past participle hatcheted or (rare) hatchetted)

  1. (transitive) To cut with a hatchet.

hatchet meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

hatchet in Hindi

small axe
परशु parśu, तवर tavar

hatchet in Tamil

கைக்கோடரி, கைச்சிறு கோடரி, கண்டகோடரி, கோடரி, கோடாரியலகு, கைக்கோடாரி

hatchet in Marathi

हॅचेट, हॅटकेट

hatchet in Urdu

بسولا, چھوٹی کلہاڑی, تبّر
More languagesFewer languages
hatchet in Bengali
হ্যাচেট
hatchet in Telugu
మడ్డుకత్తి maḍḍukatti, పరశువు paraśuvu
hatchet in Malayalam
മഴു, കോടാലി, ഇദ്ധ്മവ്രശ്നം, കുഠാരം
hatchet in Kannada
ಕೈಗೊಡಲಿ, ಸಣ್ಣ ಕೊಡಲಿ, ಮಚ್ಚು, ಮಚ್ಚುಕತ್ತಿ
hatchet in Punjabi
ਹੈਚੇਟ
hatchet in Odia
ହ୍ଯ଼ାଚେଟ୍
hatchet in Sanskrit
परशु paraśu
hatchet in Nepali
ह्याचेट
hatchet in Tagalog
puthaw
hatchet in Persian
تیشه tiše
hatchet in Thai
ขวาน kwǎan
Sindhi
ڪھاڙي khāṛe

Examples of hatchet in a sentence

  • The fellow was armed with a stone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet.1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp....
  • The savagery with which Michael Hofmann can wield a hatchet has earned him unlikely fans outside the literary circuit.2016 April 9, Philip Oltermann, “Michael Hofmann: ‘English is basically a trap. It’s almost a language for spies’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN:

All 19 example sentences with hatchet

Forms of hatchet

Noun
pluralhatchets
Verb
third-person singular presenthatchets
present participlehatcheting
past participlehatcheted
pasthatcheted
present participle (rare)hatchetting
past participle (rare)hatchetted
past (rare)hatchetted

Plural of hatchet: hatchets

Origin of hatchet

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”), Dutch heep, hiep (“billhook”), and Ancient Greek κοπίς (kopís). Mostly displaced native Old English handæx, whence Modern English hand axe.

Words formed from hatchet

Phrases with hatchet

6 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with hatchet

Questions about hatchet

What does hatchet mean?
Hatchet means a small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk.
What is hatchet in Hindi?
Hatchet in Hindi is परशु (parśu), तवर (tavar). See Hatchet meaning in Hindi.
How do you use hatchet in a sentence?
The fellow was armed with a stone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet.
What part of speech is hatchet?
Hatchet can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce hatchet?
Hatchet is pronounced /ˈhæt͡ʃɪt/.
What is the plural of hatchet?
The plural of hatchet is hatchets.

Words near hatchet in the dictionary

  1. hatches
  2. hatches out
  3. hatches up
  4. hatches, matches, and dispatches
  5. hatchest
  6. hatchet
  7. hatchet face
  8. hatchet faces
  9. hatchet job
  10. hatchet jobs
  11. hatchet man

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hatchet (page history and authors); hatchet (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hatchet (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hatchet (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hatchet (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); పరశువు (Telugu) (page history and authors); hatchet (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); hatchet (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); hatchet (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hatchet (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); hatchet (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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-hatchet.wav.

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