batten down the hatches
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Prepare for a difficult or challenging situation
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
chuẩn bị cho tình huống khó khăn hoặc đầy thách thức
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: Secure ship hatches for a storm
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
We do have to take a leaf, a little bit out of Kenzie's book from the n the late nineteen thirties and afterwards, that when things are receding, you don't batten down the hatches, you don't simply close things in.
Whoever, or whatever was in the hold seemed unwilling or unable — they had battened down the hatch once more— to do battle in the open.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-30; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “batten down the hatches” mean?
Prepare for a difficult or challenging situation Literally: Secure ship hatches for a storm
Is “batten down the hatches” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.