machete

noun

ma·​chete mə-ˈshe-tē 

-ˈche-;

-ˈshet

: a large heavy knife used for cutting sugarcane and underbrush and as a weapon

Examples of machete in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The agony of those harrowing days loomed large for many on Sunday as Rwanda marked the 30th anniversary of the genocide in which extremists from the country’s ethnic Hutu majority killed some 800,000 people — most of them ethnic Tutsis — using machetes, clubs and guns. —Abdi Latif Dahir, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2024

For Northern Territory officials, Tuesday’s violence – and clashes later that night involving around 150 people armed with axes, machetes and knives – was the final straw. —Hilary Whiteman, CNN, 29 Mar. 2024

Among the victims are thousands of Chinese immigrants, many of them smuggled across the Mexican border to toil in often abusive conditions at farms ringed by fences, surveillance cameras and guards with guns and machetes. —Sebastian Rotella, ProPublica, 14 Mar. 2024

In May 2023, a Canadian tourist was shot to death in Mexico's Pacific coast beach town of Puerto Escondido, days after a tourist from Argentina died after being attacked by a machete in another coastal town in Oaxaca. —S. Dev, CBS News, 29 Feb. 2024

The woman was on probation at the time of her arrest after she was convicted of attempting to kidnap a 6-year-old boy and threatening the boy’s parents with a machete in downtown Portland in August of 2021, the Oregonian reported. —Amaris Encinas, USA TODAY, 3 Jan. 2024

Authorities in Florida arrested a suspect who allegedly attacked another man with a machete amid a dispute about looking through text messages. —Landon Mion, Fox News, 13 Mar. 2024

Police officers also assisted the trial by holding a machete and a gun in the view of CCTV cameras, while the station was closed, to help the system better detect weapons. —Matt Burgess, WIRED, 8 Feb. 2024

The youth, who was detained in December 2020, had planned to conduct terrorist attacks using a machete against Muslims at two mosques in Singapore. —Aradhana Aravindan, Bloomberg.com, 24 Jan. 2024

Word History

Etymology

Spanish

First Known Use

1575, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

machete

noun

ma·​chete mə-ˈshet-ē 

-ˈchet-ē;

mə-ˈshet

: a large heavy knife used especially for cutting sugarcane and underbrush and as a weapon