hatchet job

American  

noun

1. a maliciously destructive critique or act.

   The special committee has done a hatchet job on the new proposal.

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hatchet job British  

noun

1. informal a malicious or devastating verbal or written attack

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hatchet job Idioms  

1. see hatchet man, def. 2.

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Etymology

Origin of hatchet job

First recorded in 1940–45

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

hatchet job

The groundbreaking first film - Ricky Gervais's favourite - focused on Tap's disastrous US tour, and the band still brand DiBergi's treatment as "a hatchet job".

From BBC ● Sep. 11, 2025

Which doesn’t mean “Crumb: A Cartoonist’s Life,” is a hatchet job.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2025

Though she was fully aware of the potential controversy of her charges, she never intended for her book to be the hatchet job that many reviewers believed it to be.

From New York Times ● Nov. 4, 2022

Roth then flirted with the notion of appointing writer and publisher James Atlas for the project but veered away when he read what he considered to be Atlas’s hatchet job on Saul Bellow.

From Washington Post ● Apr. 5, 2021

Also, unlike my Pathfinder hatchet job, I had the full schematics of the drill.

From "The Martian" by Andy Weir