hatchet
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A wooden-handled hatchet.
English
Etymology
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”). Mostly displaced native Old English handæx, whence Modern English hand axe.
Pronunciation
Noun
hatchet (plural hatchets)
- A small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk.
- 1855 November 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Blessing the Corn-fields”, in The Song of Hiawatha, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 175:
- Buried was the bloody hatchet, / Buried was the dreadful war-club, / Buried were all warlike weapons, / And the war-cry was forgotten.
Derived terms
Translations
small axe
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Verb
hatchet (third-person singular simple present hatchets, present participle hatcheting or hatchetting, simple past and past participle hatcheted or hatchetted)
- (transitive) To cut with a hatchet.