mallet

pronunciation

How to pronounce mallet in British English: UK [ˈmælɪt] word uk audio image

How to pronounce mallet in American English: US [ˈmælɪt] word us audio image

Noun:

a sports implement with a long handle and a head like a hammer; used in sports (polo or croquet) to hit a ball
a light drumstick with a rounded head that is used to strike percussion instruments
a tool resembling a hammer but with a large head (usually wooden); used to drive wedges or ram down paving stones or for crushing or beating or flattening or smoothing

Word Origin

mallet: mallet: [15] Latin malleus meant ‘hammer’ (it may be related to Latin molere ‘grind’, and to Russian mólot and Polish młot ‘hammer’). It passed into Old French as mail, of which the derivative maillet eventually reached English as mallet. Mail itself was borrowed into English as maul ‘hammer’ [13], but it now survives only as a verb (which originally meant ‘hit with a hammer’).The Latin verb derived from malleus was malleāre ‘hit with a hammer’, from which ultimately English gets malleable [14]. And the Italian descendant of malleus, maglio, was combined with a word for ‘ball’, palla, to form the name of a croquet-like game, pallamaglio; via French this passed into English as pall-mall [17], remembered in the London street-names Pall Mall and The Mall (whence the use of mall [18] for a ‘walkway’ or ‘promenade’, and latterly for a ‘shopping precinct’).=> mall, malleable, maul, pall-mall

mallet (n.): late 14c., from Old French maillet "mallet, small wooden hammer, door-knocker," diminutive of mail, from Latin malleus "a hammer," from PIE *mal-ni-, from root *mel- (1) "soft," with derivatives referring to softened material and tools for grinding (cognates: Hittite mallanzi "they grind;" Armenian malem "I crush, bruise;" Greek malakos "soft," mylos "millstone;" Latin molere "to grind," mola "millstone, mill," milium "millet;" Old English melu "meal, flour;" Albanian miel "meal, flour;" Old Church Slavonic meljo, Lithuanian malu "to grind;" Old Church Slavonic mlatu, Russian molotu "hammer").

1. But you can 't kill an idea . And that idea is : me chasing you with a big wooden mallet .

2. The water-filled bowls , when rubbed with a leather-wrapped mallet , exhibit a lively dance of water droplets as they emit a haunting sound .

3. It was made on the same principle as lazy tongs . You held it between your knees , and when you squeezed it a little mallet shot up ( it was really a cotton reel stuck on the end of a pencil ) and it hit the underneath of the table a proper biff .