Word.ws English Dictionary

prehatch

prehatch adjective: before the hatching of an egg.

Adjective

prehatch (not comparable)

  1. Before the hatching of an egg
    • The controversy stems from the company’s use of antibiotics for prehatch vaccinations two to three days before its chicks are hatched.2008 June 14, Reuters, “Tyson Foods Sues U.S.D.A. Over Antibiotic Rules”, in New York Times

Verb

prehatch (third-person singular simple present prehatches, present participle prehatching, simple past and past participle prehatched)

  1. To undergo changes that lead to hatching, such as the rupture of internal membranes as the embryo begins to emerge from the blastoderm cuticle.
    • Failure of these eggs to prehatch within 30 days at 7 C is not surprising since it took longer for prehatching to occur in nature under substantially lower temperatures than 7 C.1963, Edmund Stanislaw Broch, Ecology and Physiology of the Embryonated Egg of the Fairy Shrimp Chirocephalopsis Bundyi Forbes: With Reference to Factors Synchronizing the Life Cycle to the Temporary...

Forms of prehatch

third-person singular presentprehatches
present participleprehatching
past participleprehatched
pastprehatched

Origin of prehatch

From pre- + hatch.

Questions about prehatch

What does prehatch mean?
Prehatch means before the hatching of an egg.
What part of speech is prehatch?
Prehatch can be an adjective or a verb.

Words near prehatch in the dictionary

  1. prehardening
  2. prehardens
  3. preharvest
  4. preharvested
  5. preharvesting
  6. prehatch
  7. prehatched
  8. prehatching
  9. prehaustoria
  10. prehaustorium
  11. prehead

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prehatch (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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