hatch

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Contents

English [edit]

Pronunciation [edit]

Etymology 1 [edit]

Middle English hache, from Old English hæc, from Proto-Germanic *hakjō (compare Dutch hek ‘gate, railing’, Low German Hek ‘fence’, German Hecke), variant of *hagjō ‘hedge’. More at hedge.

Noun [edit]

hatch (plural hatches)

  1. A horizontal door in a floor or ceiling.
  2. A trapdoor.
  3. 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.
  4. A small door in large mechanical structures and vehicles such as aircraft and spacecraft often provided for access for maintenance.
  5. A opening through the deck of a ship or submarine.
  6. (slang) A gullet.
Derived terms [edit]
Translations [edit]
horizontal door
trapdoor — see trapdoor
opening for serving food
small door provided for access for maintenance
narrow passageway between the decks

Verb [edit]

hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)

  1. (transitive) To close with a hatch or hatches.
    Twere not amiss to keep our door hatched'. — Shakespeare.

Etymology 2 [edit]

From Middle English hacchen ‘to propagate’, cognate with German hecken ‘to breed, spawn’, Danish hække (“to hatch”); akin to Latvian kakale ‘penis’.[1]

Verb [edit]

hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)

  1. (intransitive) (of young animals) To emerge from an egg.
  2. (intransitive) (of eggs) To break open when a young animal emerges from it.
  3. (transitive) To incubate eggs; to cause to hatch.
  4. (transitive) To devise.
    to hatch a plan or a plot; to hatch mischief or heresy
Derived terms [edit]
Translations [edit]
to emerge from an egg
of an egg, to break open
to incubate eggs
to devise
References [edit]
  1. ^ Wolfgang Pfeifer, ed., Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen, s.v. “hecken” (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbucher Vertrag, 2005).

Noun [edit]

hatch

  1. The act of hatching.
  2. Development; disclosure; discovery.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Shakespeare to this entry?)
  3. (poultry) A group of birds that emerged from eggs at a specified time.
    These pullets are from an April hatch.
  4. (Often as Mayfly hatch) The phenomenon, lasting 1-2 days, of large clouds of mayflies appearing in one location (to mate, having reached maturity).
  5. (informal) A birth, the birth records (in the newspaper) — compare the phrase "hatched, matched, and dispatched."
Translations [edit]
birds that emerged from eggs at a specified time
phenomenon related to insects' mating

Etymology 3 [edit]

From Middle French hacher (“to chop, slice up, incise with fine lines”); Old French hachier

Verb [edit]

hatch (third-person singular simple present hatches, present participle hatching, simple past and past participle hatched)

  1. (transitive) To shade an area of a drawing or diagram with fine parallel lines, or with lines which cross each other: cross-hatch.
Translations [edit]
to shade an area — see crosshatch

External links [edit]

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