King James Bible Dictionary

HATCH, verb transitive

1. To produce young from eggs by incubation, or by artificial heat. In Egypt, chickens are hatched by artificial heat.

The partridge sitteth on eggs and hatcheth them not. Jeremiah 17:11

2. To contrive or plot; to form by meditation, and bring into being; to originate and produce in silence; as, to hatch mischief; to hatch heresy.

HATCH, verb transitive To shade by lines in drawing and engraving.

Those hatching strokes of the pencil.

1. To steep.

HATCH, verb intransitive To produce young; to bring the young to maturity. Eggs will not hatch without a due degree and continuance of heat.

HATCH, noun A brood; as many chickens as are produced at once, or by one incubation.

1. The act of exclusion from the egg.

2. Disclosure; discovery.

HATCH, or HATCHES, noun

1. Properly, the grate or frame of cross-bars laid over the opening in a ship's deck, now called hatch-bars. The lid or cover of a hatchway is also called hatches.

2. The opening in a ship's deck, or the passage from one deck to another, the name of the grate itself being used for the opening; but this is more properly called the hatchway.

3. A half-door, or door with an opening over it.

4. Floodgates.

5. In Cornwall, Eng. openings into mines, or in search of them.

6. To be under the hatches, to be confined, or to be in distress, depression or slavery.

HATCH'EL, noun An instrument formed with long iron teeth set in a board, for cleaning flax or hemp from the tow, hards or coarse part. The hatchel is a large species of comb.

HATCH'EL, verb transitive To draw flax or hemp through the teeth of a hatchel for separating the coarse part and broken pieces of the stalk from the fine fibrous parts.

1. To tease or vex, by sarcasms or reproaches; a vulgar use of the word.

HATCH'ELED, participle passive Cleansed by a hatchel; combed.

HATCH'ELER, noun One who uses a hatchel.

HATCH'ELING, participle present tense Drawing through the teeth of a hatchel.

HATCH'ET, noun A small ax with a short handle, to be used with one hand.

To take up the hatchet a phrase borrowed from the natives of America, is to make war.

To bury the hatchet is to make peace.

HATCH'ET-FACE, noun A prominent face, like the edge of a hatchet.

HATCH'ETINE, noun A substance of the hardness of soft tallow, of a yellowish white or greenish yellow color, found in South Wales.

HATCH'MENT, noun [corrupted from achievement.] An armorial escutcheon on a herse at funerals, or in a church.

HATCH'WAY, noun In ships, a square or oblong opening in the deck, affording a passage from one deck, affording a passage from one deck to another, or into the hold or lower apartments.