HAMMER

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.

Something which in firm or action resembles the common hammer; as:

That part of a clock which strikes upon the bell to indicate the hour.

The padded mallet of a piano, which strikes the wires, to produce the tones.

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.

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.

To beat with a hammer; to beat with heavy blows; as, to hammer iron.

To form or forge with a hammer; to shape by beating. "Hammered money." Dryden.

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

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

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