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hatch

Pronunciation: /hæt͡ʃ/

The English word “hatch” has 20 meanings listed here.

noun

  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.
  4. A small door in large mechanical structures and vehicles such as aircraft and spacecraft often provided for access for maintenance.
  5. An opening through the deck of a ship or submarine
  6. A gullet.
  7. A frame or weir in a river, for catching fish.
  8. A floodgate; a sluice gate.
  9. A bedstead.
  10. An opening into, or in search of, a mine.
  11. The act of hatching.
  12. Development; disclosure; discovery.
  13. A group of birds that emerged from eggs at a specified time.
  14. The phenomenon, lasting 1–2 days, of large clouds of mayflies appearing in one location to mate, having reached maturity.
  15. A birth, the birth records (in the newspaper).

verb

  1. To close with a hatch or hatches.
  2. To emerge from an egg.
  3. To break open when a young animal emerges from it.
  4. To incubate eggs; to cause to hatch.
  5. To devise (a plot or scheme).

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.

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.