Etymology First attested in 1914–1915; formed as hat + check.
1
US A room, in a theatre or other such venue, in which hats and other garments of the patrons may be stored while visiting.
Admission 25 cents—Hatcheck 15 cents.1914–1915, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman (editors), Mother Earth Bulletin (Greenwood Reprint Corp.), series 1, volume 9, page 369
The following appeal in French and in English is handed out with the hatchecks in Henri’s Restaurant, Lynbrook, Long Island, of which Henri Charpentier is the amiable owner. Evidently this is not a restaurant to be patronized by persons who refuse to mix hate with their cocktails. It might, however, serve as headquarters for certain “friends” of German Democracy.1919, George Sylvester Viereck, Viereck’s (The Fatherland Corp.), volume 10, page 155
For certain consonants normally represented with other diacritics (superposed “hatcheck,” subposed dot, bar) capitalization is used instead.1981, Dell H. Hymes, “In vain I tried to tell you”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics (2004), page 88, footnote 10
In other transcription systems…[ʃ], [ʒ], [tʃ], and [dʒ] are written with hatchecks: [š], [ž], [č], [ǰ].2006, Ralph W. Fasold, Jeff Connor-Linton, editors, An Introduction to Language and Linguistics, pages 23–24: