hatch
/hæt͡ʃ/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms hatches hatching hatched
- noun A horizontal door in a floor or ceiling. “Moving the wardrobe revealed a previously hidden hatch in the ground.”
- noun A trapdoor.
- noun 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.”
- noun A small door in large mechanical structures and vehicles such as aircraft and spacecraft often provided for access for maintenance.
- noun (nautical) An opening through the deck of a ship or submarine
- noun (slang) A gullet.
- noun A frame or weir in a river, for catching fish.
- noun A floodgate; a sluice gate.
- verb (transitive) To close with a hatch or hatches.
- verb (intransitive, of young animals) To emerge from an egg. “These three chicks hatched yesterday morning.”
- verb (intransitive, of eggs) To break open when a young animal emerges from it. “She was delighted when she heard the crackling sound of the eggs hatching.”
- verb (transitive) To incubate eggs; to cause to hatch. “I'm hatching this mysterious egg I found in the forest.”
- verb (transitive) To devise (a plot or scheme). “World domination was only one of the evil schemes he had hatched over the years.”
- noun The act of hatching.
- noun (figurative) Development; disclosure; discovery.
- noun (poultry) A group of birds that emerged from eggs at a specified time. “These pullets are from an April hatch.”
- noun (often as mayfly hatch) The phenomenon, lasting 1–2 days, of large clouds of mayflies appearing in one location to mate, having reached maturity.
- noun (informal) A birth, the birth records (in the newspaper). “hatch, match, and dispatch”
- verb (transitive) To shade an area of (a drawing, diagram, etc.) with fine parallel lines, or with lines which cross each other (crosshatch).
- verb (transitive, obsolete) To cross; to spot; to stain; to steep.
Synonyms
hatch up hatching crosshatch hachure think up think of dream up concoct brood cover incubate
Etymology
From Middle English hacche, hache, from Old English hæċ, from Proto-West Germanic *hakkju (compare Dutch hek ‘gate, railing’, Low German Heck ‘pasture gate, farmyard gate’), variant of *haggju ‘hedge’. More at hedge.
From Middle English hacche, hacchen (“to propagate”), from Old English *hæċċan, āhaċċian (“to peck out; hatch”), from Proto-Germanic *hakjaną.
Cognate with German hecken ‘to breed, spawn’, Danish hække (“to hatch”), Swedish häcka (“to breed”); akin to Latvian kakale ‘penis’.
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.
English surname from the root of hatch (“gate”).
Webster’s 1913
- verb To cross with lines in a peculiar manneHatching.
- verb To cross; to spot; to stain; to steep. [Obs.]
- verb To produce, as young, from an egg or eggs by incubation, or by artificial heat; to produce young from (eggs); as, the young when hatched. Paley.
- verb To contrive or plot; to form by meditation, and bring into being; to originate and produce; to concoct; as, to hatch mischief; to hatch heresy. Hooker.
Etymology [F. hacher to chop, hack. See Hash.]
Etymology [OE. hacchen, hetchen; akin to G. hecken, Dan. hekke; cf. MHG. hagen bull; perh. akin to E. hatch a half door, and orig. meaning, to produce under a hatch. 1. To produce, as young, from an egg or eggs by incubation, or by artificial heat; to produce young from (eggs); as, the young when hatched. Paley. As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not. Jer. xvii. 11. For the hens do not sit upon the eggs; but by keeping them in a certain equal heat they [the husbandmen]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “hatch”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details