Definition

1. Noun:
   • A person employed to perform unpleasant or difficult tasks, especially on behalf of someone else, such as dismissing employees or making severe cuts. This person acts as an agent for a superior, taking blame or handling disagreeable duties.
   • A professional assassin; a hired killer. This meaning refers to someone paid to murder people.

Usage Examples

• Noun (Corporate/Unpleasant Tasks):
  • The CEO brought in a hatchet man to cut costs by laying off hundreds of staff.
  • He earned a reputation as the company's hatchet man after closing three unprofitable divisions.
• Noun (Assassin):
  • The crime boss sent a hatchet man to deal with his rival.
  • In the film, the protagonist is a former hatchet man trying to leave his violent past behind.

Advanced Usage

• The term is often used metaphorically in business and politics. A hatchet man (or hatchet woman) is not just someone who makes cuts, but who does so ruthlessly and without sentiment, "wielding the axe" for an organization or leader.
• The imagery comes from the tool (a hatchet), implying brutal, direct, and often destructive action.

Variants and Related Words

• Hatchet job (noun phrase): A fierce verbal or written attack intended to damage a reputation.
  • The critic's review was a complete hatchet job on the author's new novel.

Synonyms

• For the "unpleasant tasks" meaning: enforcer, axeman, troubleshooter, fixer, heavy.
• For the "assassin" meaning: hitman, assassin, gunman, killer, hired gun.

Related Idioms/Phrases

• To bury the hatchet: This is a separate, common idiom meaning to make peace, to end a quarrel or conflict. It is the opposite action of what a does.
  • After years of feuding, the two families finally decided to bury the hatchet.

Noun

1. one whose job it is to execute unpleasant tasks for a superior
2. a professional killer