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.