hammer
pronunciation
How to pronounce hammer in British English:
UK [ˈhæmə(r)]
How to pronounce hammer in American English:
US [ˈhæmər]
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- Noun:
- the part of a gunlock that strikes the percussion cap when the trigger is pulled
- a hand tool with a heavy rigid head and a handle; used to deliver an impulsive force by striking
- an athletic competition in which a heavy metal ball that is attached to a flexible wire is hurled as far as possible
- the ossicle attached to the eardrum
- a heavy metal sphere attached to a flexible wire; used in the hammer throw
- a striker that is covered in felt and that causes the piano strings to vibrate
- a power tool for drilling rocks
- the act of pounding (delivering repeated heavy blows)
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- Verb:
- beat with or as if with a hammer
- create by hammering
Word Origin
- hammer
- hammer: [OE] Hammer is part of a widespread Germanic word-family, including also German and Danish hammer, Dutch hamer, and Swedish hammar. The ancestor of the Scandinavian forms, Old Norse hamarr, meant ‘stone crag’ as well as ‘hammer’. This and possible connections with the standard words for ‘stone, rock’ in the Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavonic language groups (such as Sanskrit açman and Russian kamen’) suggest that hammer originally denoted some sort of tool with a stone head.
- hammer (n.)
- Old English hamor "hammer," from Proto-Germanic *hamaraz (cognates: Old Saxon hamur, Middle Dutch, Dutch hamer, Old High German hamar, German Hammer). The Old Norse cognate hamarr meant "stone, crag" (it's common in English place names), and suggests an original sense of the Germanic words as "tool with a stone head," which would describe the first hammers. The Germanic words thus could be from a PIE *ka-mer-, with reversal of initial sounds, from PIE *akmen "stone, sharp stone used as a tool" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic kamy, Russian kameni "stone"), from root *ak- "sharp" (see acme). As a part of a firearm, 1580s; as a part of a piano, 1774; as a small bone of the ear, 1610s. Figurative use of "aggressive and destructive foe" is late 14c., from similar use of French martel, Latin malleus. To go at it hammer and tongs "with great violence and vigor" (1708) is an image from blacksmithing (the tongs hold the metal and the hammer beats it). Hammer and sickle as an emblem of Soviet communism attested from 1921, symbolizing industrial and agricultural labor.
- hammer (v.)
- late 14c., "deal blows with a hammer or axe;" mid-15c., "to produce (something) by blows with a hammer," from hammer (n.). Also sometimes in Middle English the verb to describe how Christ was crucified. Figurative meaning "work (something) out laboriously" recorded from 1580s. Meaning "beat or drive with or as if with a hammer" is from 1640s; that of "to defeat heavily" is from 1948. Old English had hamorian "to beat out, forge." Related: Hammered; hammering. Crist, as he was ruthfully hamerd apon the croce, Songe to his fadire of heven. ["The Mirror of Man's Salvation," 15c.]
Example
- 1. First , craft a sword and a hammer .
- 2. To do that for one hammer would be prohibitively expensive .
- 3. Failing that , you could also carry your own small hammer .
- 4. We are like jewels , shaped with the hammer and chisel of adversity .
- 5. Nowhere will you find a hammer .