Category:Hammer

Ham"mer, n. Etym: [OE. hamer, AS. hamer, hamor; akin to D. hamer, G. & Dan. hammer, Sw. hammare, Icel. hamarr, hammer, crag, and perh. to Gr. a stone.]

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. Shak.

2. Something which in firm 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. (Gun.)

Defn: 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 of 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. J. H. Newman. 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 (Zoöl.), 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.

hammer Ham"mer, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Hammered; p. pr. & vb. n. 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." Dryden.

3. To form in the mind; to shape by hard intellectual labor; -- usually with out. Who was hammering out a penny dialogue. Jeffry.

hammer Ham"mer, v. i.

1. To be busy forming anything; to labor hard as if shaping something with a hammer. Whereon this month I have hammering. Shak.

2. To strike repeated blows, literally or figuratively. Blood and revenge are hammering in my head. Shak.

- ---excerpt from the Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Hammer - (1.) Heb. pattish, used by gold-beaters (Isaiah 41:7) and by quarrymen (Jeremiah 23:29). Metaphorically of Babylon (Jeremiah 50:23) or Nebuchadnezzar. (2.) Heb. makabah, a stone-cutter's mallet (1 Kings 6:7), or of any workman (Judges 4:21; Isaiah 44:12). (3.) Heb. halmuth, a poetical word for a workman's hammer, found only in Judges 5:26, where it denotes the mallet with which the pins of the tent of the nomad are driven into the ground. (4.) Heb. mappets, rendered "battle-ax" in Jeremiah 51:20. This was properly a "mace," which is thus described by Rawlinson: "The Assyrian mace was a short, thin weapon, and must either have been made of a very tough wood or (and this is more probable) of metal. It had an ornamented head, which was sometimes very beautifully modeled, and generally a strap or string at the lower end by which it could be grasped with greater firmness."