hammer: [OE] Hammer is part of a widespread Germanic word-family, including also German and Danish hammer, Dutch hamer, and Swedish hammar. The ancestor of the Scandinavian forms, Old Norse hamarr, meant ‘stone crag’ as well as ‘hammer’. This and possible connections with the standard words for ‘stone, rock’ in the Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavonic language groups (such as Sanskrit açman and Russian kamen’) suggest that hammer originally denoted some sort of tool with a stone head.
hammer (n.)
Old English hamor "hammer," from Proto-Germanic *hamaraz (cognates: Old Saxon hamur, Middle Dutch, Dutch hamer, Old High German hamar, German Hammer). The Old Norse cognate hamarr meant "stone, crag" (it's common in English place names), and suggests an original sense of the Germanic words as "tool with a stone head," which would describe the first hammers. The Germanic words thus could be from a PIE *ka-mer-, with reversal of initial sounds, from PIE *akmen "stone, sharp stone used as a tool" (cognates: Old Church Slavonic kamy, Russian kameni "stone"), from root *ak- "sharp" (see acme).
As a part of a firearm, 1580s; as a part of a piano, 1774; as a small bone of the ear, 1610s. Figurative use of "aggressive and destructive foe" is late 14c., from similar use of French martel, Latin malleus. To go at it hammer and tongs "with great violence and vigor" (1708) is an image from blacksmithing (the tongs hold the metal and the hammer beats it). Hammer and sickle as an emblem of Soviet communism attested from 1921, symbolizing industrial and agricultural labor.
hammer (v.)
late 14c., "deal blows with a hammer or axe;" mid-15c., "to produce (something) by blows with a hammer," from hammer (n.). Also sometimes in Middle English the verb to describe how Christ was crucified. Figurative meaning "work (something) out laboriously" recorded from 1580s. Meaning "beat or drive with or as if with a hammer" is from 1640s; that of "to defeat heavily" is from 1948. Old English had hamorian "to beat out, forge." Related: Hammered; hammering.
Crist, as he was ruthfully hamerd apon the croce, Songe to his fadire of heven.
["The Mirror of Man's Salvation," 15c.]
实用例句
1. To avoid damaging the tree, hammer a wooden peg into the hole.
为了不毁坏树，用锤子将一个木栓钉进洞里。
来自柯林斯例句
2. Hammer's business pedigree almost gua-ranteed him the acquaintance of U.S. presidents.
哈默的商业背景几乎保证了他能够结识美国总统。
来自柯林斯例句
3. She swung the hammer at his head with all her might.
她使出全身力气抡起榔头砸向他的脑袋。
来自柯林斯例句
4. The workers kneel on the ground and hammer the small stones in.
工人们跪在地上，将小石子锤进去。
来自柯林斯例句
5. Hammer-throwing for women is not yet a major event.
