noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A violent protest against the drinking of alcohol in which the protester attacks the bar with a hatchet. countable, uncountable

   "I tell you I was strongly tempted to perform a little hatchetation on them. And cigarette smoke? Phew!"

Example

More examples

"I tell you I was strongly tempted to perform a little hatchetation on them. And cigarette smoke? Phew!"

Etymology

From hatchet + -ation, coined by Carrie Nation (1846-1911) to describe her own acts of vandalism. Possibly a pun on agitation.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.