Middle English: from Old French hachette, diminutive of hache 'axe', from medieval Latin hapia, of Germanic origin.

• English took over French hachette in the Middle Ages. It derives from hache ‘an axe’— see hash. To bury the hatchet, ‘end a quarrel or conflict’, refers to a Native American custom which involved burying a hatchet or tomahawk to mark the conclusion of a peace treaty between warring groups. The custom is described as early as 1680; the current sense of the phrase emerged around 70 years later. In 1974 the then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson observed wryly of his Cabinet: ‘I've buried all the hatchets. But I know where I've buried them and I can dig them up if necessary.’ Since the 1940s a hatchet man has been somebody employed to carry out controversial or disagreeable tasks, such as dismissing people from their jobs or writing journalistic pieces to destroy a person's reputation. The original hatchet man, in the USA during the late 19th century, was a hired Chinese assassin who carried a hatchet with the handle cut off.