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”). Mostly displaced native Old English handæx, whence Modern English hand axe.

• IPA^(key): /ˈhæt͡ʃɪt/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ætʃɪt

hatchet (plural hatchets)

1. 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.

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

1. (transitive) To cut with a hatchet.