hatch1
/hatʃ
/noun
1A small opening in a floor, wall, or roof allowing access from one area to another: a cargo hatch a service hatch...
- He unscrewed the bolts that secured an access hatch to the wall and keyed something into a control panel adjacent to it.
- There was also an access hatch in the floor that would require the use of a fork lift truck to lift goods of any weight up into the second floor.
- Emily leads the others down a short corridor until they come to an access hatch in the wall.
1.1A door in an aircraft, spacecraft, or submarine.And as the forward escape hatch was also destroyed, the LR5's only hope of gaining access to the submarine now is through the aft hatch....
- The pilot and his passenger, who were both wearing lap and diagonal shoulder straps, escaped injury and were able to climb out of the aircraft through the normal hatches.
- First Lt. Bill Bower, ready to bail out, paused at one of the bomber's hatches and peered into the darkening sky below for some sign that his crew got out of the aircraft safely.
1.2The rear door of a hatchback car: a spare wheel mounted on the rear hatch...
- It has the look of a nice large saloon, provides plenty of space for passengers, and a large boot reached through a rear hatch.
- Now classified as a mid-size sedan, it's only slightly smaller than a Camry and even more versatile with its rear hatch.
- Open up the rear hatch and you can fit in a week's shopping… for a family of 15!
1.3 short for hatchback.Saloons attract marginally lower insurance costs, as it's perceived that gaining access to a hatch is easier....
- This is a car that handles with an enjoyable agility, steers with sporting precision and musters enough urge from its titchy 659 cc engine to keep pace with all but the most spiritedly driven hot hatches.
- One way of looking at it is: Plenty of kids buy and modify Honda Civics, especially the hatch versions.
Phrases
down the hatch
under (the) hatches
Origin
Old English hæcc (denoting the lower half of a divided door), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch hek 'paling, screen'.
Rhymes
hatch2
/hatʃ/verb
1 [no object] (Of an egg) open and produce a young animal: eggs need to be put in a warm place to hatch...
- When the eggs hatch, the caterpillar enters the first instar (stage of development).
- Once the eggs hatch, both the male and the female feed the young.
- Once the eggs hatch, the Larvae burrow inside the host and begin consuming nonessential tissues.
1.1 [with object] Incubate (an egg).Hatcheries, which use incubators to hatch the eggs, take advantage of this biological phenomenon for shipping....
- Mother hen hatches her eggs in a farmyard and finds one of her baby chicks is a scrawny, ugly duck.
- The males are left behind to guard and hatch the eggs, which they cradle at all times on top of their feet, even during blinding blizzards.
Synonyms
incubate, brood, sit on, cover;
bring forth
1.2(Of a young bird, fish, or reptile) emerge from its egg: ten little chicks hatched out...
- In the first two weeks after the young hatch, the female stays on the nest to brood them, and the male brings food for the female and the owlets.
- Roughly a hundred of these snakes could fit inside of the giant egg that the single snake hatched from.
- Just because the tops of many eggs were broken, does not necessarily mean the dinosaurs hatched.
1.3 [with object] Cause (a young animal) to emerge from its egg: our penguins were hatched and hand-reared here...
- Lobster larvae were hatched in our culture facility and fed live brine shrimp.
- After emerging, the moths were stored at 4°C. Moths are incapable of moving at low temperatures and thus they remained in good condition until all larvae were hatched.
- Because of our aim to prevent competition within broods, we carried out the survival analyses for experimental chicks without the inclusion of the four nests that had hatched two chicks.
2 [with object] Conspire to devise (a plot or plan): the little plot that you and Sylvia hatched up last night...
- The pedestrianisation scheme has gone ahead even though it is difficult to find anyone outside the offices in which the plan has been hatched up who supports it.
- Did the two hatch the plot together, in secrecy, with the over eager Heffernan ready to cop the worst of it should their plan go belly up?
- So together they hatch the plot of doing The War of the Worlds on radio, to wow the studios.
Synonyms
devise, conceive, contrive, concoct, brew, invent, plan, design, formulate;
think up, make up, dream up, trump up, put together
informal cook up
noun
A newly hatched brood: a hatch of mayflies...
- Every spring the moorhens build themselves a nest on a raft of twigs or on the bank at the waterline, for a clutch of speckled brown eggs to bring off a hatch of four or five tiny brown-black chicks.
- Mayfly hatches are not confined to rivers, some lakes also have spectacular mayfly hatches.
- Nests were revisited on the expected hatch day and every 3 days after hatching to assess nest success and nestling survival.
Phrases
hatches, matches, and dispatches
Origin
Middle English hacche; related to Swedish häcka and Danish hække.
hatch3
/hatʃ/verb [with object]
(In fine art and technical drawing) shade (an area) with closely drawn parallel lines: (as noun hatching) the miniaturist’s use of hatching and stippling...
- As I said, in the plan that is annexed to the first respondents' submissions, it is the shaded hatched area.
- But my gratitude also extends to those drivers who reverse on to main roads, see hatched areas as special taxi lanes and who ask for the removal of the indicator lights upon purchase of their vehicle.
- It cited improvements to the road layout, including lane markings, hatched areas and clearer road signs as the reason.
Origin
Late 15th century (in the sense 'inlay with strips of metal'): from Old French hacher, from hache (see hatchet).