bury the hatchet

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an idiom meaning to end a quarrel or conflict and make peace, derived from a practice documented among several North American Indigenous nations — particularly the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — in which warring parties would literally bury weapons to signify the cessation of hostilities and the beginning of a period of peace; the metaphor of burial captures the desired finality: once a hatchet is buried, digging it up requires deliberate effort and signals the resumption of conflict; in contemporary usage, to bury the hatchet is to put aside grievances, cease hostilities, and move forward in the relationship without carrying the weapons of past conflict; it implies a degree of mutual agreement and is more complete than simply calling a truce