hammer

Meanings

Noun

• A tool with a heavy head and a handle used for pounding.
• The act of using a hammer to hit something.
• A moving part of a firearm that strikes the firing pin to discharge a gun.
• The malleus, a small bone of the middle ear.
• In a piano or dulcimer, a piece of wood covered in felt that strikes the string.
• A device made of a heavy steel ball attached to a length of wire, and used for throwing.
• The last stone in an end.
• A frisbee throwing style in which the disc is held upside-down with a forehand grip and thrown above the head.
• Part of a clock that strikes upon a bell to indicate the hour.
• One who, or that which, smites or shatters.
• The accelerator pedal.

Verb

• To strike repeatedly with a hammer, some other implement, the fist, etc.
• To form or forge with a hammer; to shape by beating.
• To emphasize a point repeatedly.
• To hit particularly hard.
• To ride very fast.
• To strike internally, as if hit by a hammer.
• To defeat (a person, a team) resoundingly
• To make high demands on (a system or service).
• To declare (a person) a defaulter on the stock exchange.
• To beat down the price of (a stock), or depress (a market).
• To have hard sex with

Origin

• From Middle English hamer, from Old English hamor, from Proto-West Germanic *hamar, from Proto-Germanic *hamaraz ("tool with a stone head") (compare West Frisian hammer, Low German Hamer, Dutch hamer, German Hammer, Danish hammer, Swedish hammare), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱmoros (compare Sanskrit अश्मर ("stony")), itself a derivation from *h₂éḱmō.
• For *h₂éḱmō, compare Lithuanian akmuõ, Latvian akmens, Russian камень, Serbo-Croatian kamēn, Albanian kmesë ("sickle"), Ancient Greek ἄκμων ("meteor rock, anvil"), Avestan 𐬥𐬀𐬨𐬯𐬀, Sanskrit अश्मन्) (root *h₂eḱ-).
• Originally signalled by knocking with a wooden mallet.