Definition of hammer
- n. - An instrument for driving nails, beating metals, and the
like, consisting of a head, usually of steel or iron, fixed crosswise
to a handle.
- n. - Something which in firm or action resembles the common
hammer
- n. - That part of a clock which strikes upon the bell to
indicate the hour.
- n. - The padded mallet of a piano, which strikes the wires, to
produce the tones.
- n. - The malleus.
- n. - 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.
- n. - Also, a person of thing that smites or shatters; as, St.
Augustine was the hammer of heresies.
- v. t. - To beat with a hammer; to beat with heavy blows; as, to
hammer iron.
- v. t. - To form or forge with a hammer; to shape by beating.
- v. t. - To form in the mind; to shape by hard intellectual
labor; -- usually with out.
- v. i. - To be busy forming anything; to labor hard as if shaping
something with a hammer.
- v. i. - To strike repeated blows, literally or figuratively.