hatch.
A horizontal door in a floor or ceiling.
Meaning & usage
A horizontal door in a floor or ceiling.
Moving the wardrobe revealed a previously hidden hatch in the ground.
A trapdoor.
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.
A small door in large mechanical structures and vehicles such as aircraft and spacecraft often provided for access for maintenance.
An opening through the deck of a ship or submarine
A gullet.
A frame or weir in a river, for catching fish.
A floodgate; a sluice gate.
A bedstead.
An opening into, or in search of, a mine.
Where this word comes from
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.
To close with a hatch or hatches.
Where this word comes from
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.
To emerge from an egg.
These three chicks hatched yesterday morning.
To break open when a young animal emerges from it.
She was delighted when she heard the crackling sound of the eggs hatching.
To incubate eggs; to cause to hatch.
I'm hatching this mysterious egg I found in the forest.
To devise (a plot or scheme).
World domination was only one of the evil schemes he had hatched over the years.
Where this word comes from
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’.
The act of hatching.
Development; disclosure; discovery.
A group of birds that emerged from eggs at a specified time.
These pullets are from an April hatch.
The phenomenon, lasting 1–2 days, of large clouds of mayflies appearing in one location to mate, having reached maturity.
A birth, the birth records (in the newspaper).
hatch, match, and dispatch
Where this word comes from
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’.
To shade an area of (a drawing, diagram, etc.) with fine parallel lines, or with lines which cross each other (crosshatch).
To cross; to spot; to stain; to steep.
Where this word comes from
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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.