hatchet

plural hatchets

1. A small, light axe with a short handle; a tomahawk.

   The fellow was armed with a stone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet. In his black hair were several gay-colored feathers.

   1918 September–November, Edgar Rice Burroughs, “The Land That Time Forgot”, in The Blue Book Magazine, Chicago, Ill.: Story-press Corp., →OCLC; republished as chapter III, in Hugo Gernsback, editor, Amazing Stories, part I, number 11, New York, N.Y.: Experimenter Publishing, February 1927, →OCLC, book I, page 1158

   3 more examples

   “It must be admitted, Nick, you are a very literal logician—‘dog won't eat dog,’ is our English saying. Still the Yankee will fight the Yengeese, it would seem. In a word, the Great Father, in England, has raised the hatchet against his American children.”

   1843, [James Fenimore Cooper], Wyandotté, or The Hutted Knoll. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 117

   Buried was the bloody hatchet, / Buried was the dreadful war-club, / Buried were all warlike weapons, / And the war-cry was forgotten.

   1855 November 10, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Blessing the Corn-fields”, in The Song of Hiawatha, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, page 175

   The metal axe continues for a long time to be made in the less efficient shape of the stone hatchet; stone buildings and tombs are made to imitate wooden ones; as Morgan pointed out, the names of family relationships in primitive languages reflect a pattern that has ceased to exist in the society in question.

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 203

2. figurativelyBelligerence, animosity; harsh criticism.

   hatchet job

   3 more examples

   to bury the hatchet

   “Dat true as missionary! What a soldier do, cap'in, if so much peace? Warrior love a war-path.” “I wish it were not so, Nick. But my hatchet is buried, I hope, for ever.”

   1843, [James Fenimore Cooper], Wyandotté, or The Hutted Knoll. […], volume I, Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard, →OCLC, page 42

   The savagery with which Michael Hofmann can wield a hatchet has earned him unlikely fans outside the literary circuit. A recent issue of Viz ran a cartoon of the critic, poet and translator urinating all over a phone booth, while two donnish FR Leavis types nodded appreciatively from a safe distance.

   2016 April 9, Philip Oltermann, “Michael Hofmann: ‘English is basically a trap. It’s almost a language for spies’”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

present singular third person hatchets · participle present hatcheting · participle present rare hatchetting · participle past hatcheted · past hatcheted · participle past rare hatchetted · past rare hatchetted

1. transitiveTo cut with a hatchet.