What is the meaning of batten down the hatch?
What is the meaning of batten down the hatch?
Prepare for trouble
Prepare for trouble, as in Here comes the boss—batten down the hatches. This term originated in the navy, where it signified preparing for a storm by fastening down canvas over doorways and hatches (openings) with strips of wood called battens. [
Where did the saying batten down the hatches come from?
The English phrase batten down the hatches comes from the way sailors made old ships watertight during storms. Has anyone ever told you to batten down the hatches? If so, they were telling you to prepare for trouble. Maybe they saw your boss walking angrily down the hall.
What hatch means?
1 : to produce young by incubation. 2a : to emerge from an egg, chrysalis, or pupa. b : to give forth young or imagoes. 3 : to incubate eggs : brood.
What does Hatch mean in Old English?
hatch (v. 1) early 13c., hachen, “to produce young from eggs by incubation,” probably from an unrecorded Old English *hæccan, of unknown origin, related to Middle High German, German hecken “to mate” (used of birds). Meaning “to come forth from an egg,” also “cause to come forth from an egg” are late 14c.
What is a batten on a ship?
Battens are long, thin strips of material, historically wooden but today usually fiberglass, vinyl, or carbon fiber, used to support the roach of a sail. They are also used on tall ships to form the ladders up the shrouds in a fashion similar to ratlines.
What does a huntress mean?
woman who hunts
: a woman who hunts game also : a female animal that hunts prey.
How do you use the word hatch?
Hatch sentence example
- The parents leave the eggs to hatch where they are deposited, in sand or in mould.
- The male penguin is the one responsible for keeping the egg safe until the baby penguin is ready to hatch .
- The chief engineer of the submarine went down through the hatch .
What is meaning of hatch out?
Literally, to be born by emerging from an egg. The class gathered around as the baby duckling hatched out of its shell. 2. To devise or organize something, especially in secret. In this usage, a noun or pronoun can be used between “hatch” and “out.” We hatched out a plan to steal the diamonds from the museum.
What is Bahing in English?
sneeze sneeze. Last Update: 2017-11-07.
What is the Batten disease?
Batten disease is the common name for a broad class of rare, fatal, inherited disorders of the nervous system also known as neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses, or NCLs. In these diseases, a defect in a specific gene triggers a cascade of problems that interferes with a cell’s ability to recycle certain molecules.
Where does the phrase batten down the hatches come from?
(From a nautical expression meaning, literally, to seal the hatches against the arrival of a storm. The word order is fixed.) Here comes that contentious Mrs. Jones. Batten down the hatches! Batten down the hatches, Congress is in session again. Prepare for trouble, as in Here comes the boss-batten down the hatches.
What’s the difference between a batten and a hatch?
Note: Battens are strips of wood used for fastening things down. Hatches are openings in the deck of a ship, or the wooden flaps which cover the openings. prepare for a difficulty or crisis. Batten down the hatches was originally a nautical term meaning ‘make a ship’s hatches secure with gratings and tarpaulins’ in expectation of stormy weather.
What is the meaning of the word Batten?
A batten is a long piece of wood which was used to hold down strong material in order to cover a ship’s hatches (= openings in the deck of a boat leading to the lower level) in a storm. To prepare for an imminent disaster or emergency. American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition.
When did they batten down the hatches in the seventies?
1998 Oldie They endured the hard pounding of the Seventies, when Labour battened down the hatches, and soldiered through the follies of the early Eighties. prepare yourself for a period of difficulty or trouble: Hollywood is battening down the hatches in expectation of a strike by actors and writers this summer.