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Hammer   /hˈæmər/   Listen
noun
Hammer  n.  
1.
An instrument for driving nails, beating metals, and the like, consisting of a head, usually of steel or iron, fixed crosswise to a handle. "With busy hammers closing rivets up."
2.
Something which in form or action resembles the common hammer; as:
(a)
That part of a clock which strikes upon the bell to indicate the hour.
(b)
The padded mallet of a piano, which strikes the wires, to produce the tones.
(c)
(Anat.) The malleus. See under Ear.
(d)
(Gun.) That part of a gunlock which strikes the percussion cap, or firing pin; the cock; formerly, however, a piece of steel covering the pan of a flintlock musket and struck by the flint of the cock to ignite the priming.
(e)
Also, a person or thing that smites or shatters; as, St. Augustine was the hammer of heresies. "He met the stern legionaries (of Rome) who had been the "massive iron hammers" of the whole earth."
3.
(Athletics) A spherical weight attached to a flexible handle and hurled from a mark or ring. The weight of head and handle is usually not less than 16 pounds.
Atmospheric hammer, a dead-stroke hammer in which the spring is formed by confined air.
Drop hammer, Face hammer, etc. See under Drop, Face, etc.
Hammer fish. See Hammerhead.
Hammer hardening, the process of hardening metal by hammering it when cold.
Hammer shell (Zool.), any species of Malleus, a genus of marine bivalve shells, allied to the pearl oysters, having the wings narrow and elongated, so as to give them a hammer-shaped outline; called also hammer oyster.
To bring to the hammer, to put up at auction.


verb
Hammer  v. t.  (past & past part. hammered; pres. part. hammering)  
1.
To beat with a hammer; to beat with heavy blows; as, to hammer iron.
2.
To form or forge with a hammer; to shape by beating. "Hammered money."
3.
To form in the mind; to shape by hard intellectual labor; usually with out. "Who was hammering out a penny dialogue."


Hammer  v. i.  
1.
To be busy forming anything; to labor hard as if shaping something with a hammer. "Whereon this month I have been hammering."
2.
To strike repeated blows, literally or figuratively. "Blood and revenge are hammering in my head."





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Hammer" Quotes from Famous Books



... are the ruins of St. Catharine's Chapel, built in the fourteenth century. The local tradition tells that this and St. Martha's Chapel, on an adjacent hill, were built by two sister-giantesses, who worked with a single hammer, which they flung from hill to hill to each other as required. St. Catharine's Chapel long since fell in ruins, and not far away on the slope, St. Catharine's Spring flows perennially. On Albury Down is a residence of the Duke of Northumberland, Albury Park, laid out in the seventeenth ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... day the Dream came to Big Ivan as he plowed. It was a wonder dream. It sprang into his brain as he walked behind the plow, and for a few minutes he quivered as the big bridge quivers when the Beresina sends her ice squadrons to hammer the arches. It made his heart pound mightily, and his lips and throat became ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... God, I am glad of it; I thought our hammer of destruction, our thunderbolt, whom the Greeks called Achilles, must be known to the people of Horncastle. Well, Hunyadi and Corvinus ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... joint proprietors. In the making of it, the hammer and nails were mine by right of sex, while she stitched in womanish fashion on the fabrics. She was leading woman and I was either the hero or the villain as fitted to my mood. My younger cousin—although we scorned her for ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... them, meeting them just abreast of Roger. The first man he met thrust at him with his spear, but Oswald parried with his sword, and with a back-handed blow smote the man just under the chin, and he fell with a crash from his horse. At the same moment he heard a blow like that of a smith's hammer, as Roger's staff fell upon the steel cap of the ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty


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