(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.
