hatch
English
Pronunciation
- enPR: hăch, IPA(key): /hætʃ/
- Hyphenation: hatch
- Rhymes: -ætʃ
Etymology 1
From Middle English hacche, hache, from Old English hæċ, from Proto-Germanic *hakjō (compare Dutch hek ‘gate, railing’, Low German Heck ‘pasture gate, farmyard gate’), variant of *hagjō ‘hedge’. More at hedge.
Noun
hatch (plural hatches)
- A horizontal door in a floor or ceiling.
- A trapdoor.
- 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 small door in large mechanical structures and vehicles such as aircraft and spacecraft often provided for access for maintenance.
- An opening through the deck of a ship or submarine.
- (slang) A gullet.
- A frame or weir in a river, for catching fish.
- A floodgate; a sluice gate.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Ainsworth to this entry?)
- (Scotland) A bedstead.
- (Can we find and add a quotation of Sir Walter Scott to this entry?)
- (mining) An opening into, or in search of, a mine.
Derived terms
Translations
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Verb
hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)
- (transitive) To close with a hatch or hatches.
- Shakespeare
- 'Twere not amiss to keep our door hatched.
- Shakespeare
Etymology 2
From Middle English hacchen ‘to propagate’, from Old English hæċċan, āhaċċian (“to peck out; hatch”), cognate with German hecken ‘to breed, spawn’, Danish hække (“to hatch”); akin to Latvian kakale ‘penis’.[1]
Verb
hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)
Derived terms
Translations
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References
- Wolfgang Pfeifer, ed., Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, s.v. “hecken” (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbucher Vertrag, 2005).
Noun
hatch (plural hatches)
- The act of hatching.
- Development; disclosure; discovery.
- 1603, William Shakespeare, Hamlet:
- There's something in his soul,
- O'er which his melancholy sits on brood;
- I do doubt the hatch and the disclose
- Will be some danger:
-
- (poultry) A group of birds that emerged from eggs at a specified time.
- These pullets are from an April hatch.
- (often as mayfly hatch) 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.
- 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,
- (informal) A birth, the birth records (in the newspaper) — compare the phrase "hatched, matched, and dispatched."
Translations
Etymology 3
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.
Verb
hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)
- (transitive) To shade an area of (a drawing, diagram, etc.) with fine parallel lines, or with lines which cross each other (cross-hatch).
- Dryden
- Those hatching strokes of the pencil.
- Chapman
- Shall win this sword, silvered and hatched.
- Dryden
- (transitive, obsolete) To cross; to spot; to stain; to steep.
- Beaumont and Fletcher
- His weapon hatched in blood.
- Beaumont and Fletcher