What's the difference between hammer and poleaxe?

Hammer


Definition:

  • (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.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Meeting after meeting during 2011 to try to hammer out agreements about the basic shape of the Egyptian constitution – meetings that always mysteriously collapsed.
  • (2) The result will be yet another humiliating hammering for Labour in a seat it could never win, but hey, never mind.
  • (3) The trust was a compromise hammered out in the wake of the Hutton report, when the corporation hoped to maintain the status quo by preserving the old BBC governors.
  • (4) Denni Karlsson and I are standing by a glacial river as it hammers through a rocky gorge.
  • (5) The preceding paper (Hammer, C.H., A. Nicholson, and M. M. Mayer, 1975, Proc.
  • (6) The neurological deficits presented in this case were due to pontine infarction, which was suspected to be produced by thrombosis from the aneurysm, and a hydrocephalus might have been caused by a "water-hammering" effect of the elongated basilar artery.
  • (7) You’d think Michael Foot himself was running, attending debates in a hammer and sickle-print donkey jacket, from the amount we’ve been talking about him.
  • (8) The ultrasonic root planing however showed a more discrete scalloped surface with very small tears and having a hammered appearance.
  • (9) It's hard to imagine a more masculine character than Thor, who is based on the god of thunder of Norse myth: he's the strapping, hammer-wielding son of Odin who, more often than not, sports a beard and likes nothing better than smacking frost giants.
  • (10) He's scored for the Hammers, Newcastle, Derby and Leicester.
  • (11) IPC Media's NME, which was overtaken by Future Publishing monthly Metal Hammer for the first time in the second half of last year, had an average weekly circulation of 40,948 in the first half of 2009, down 27.2% on the same period in 2008.
  • (12) On the weather map rain hammers down like a monsoon.
  • (13) Formative experiences included watching Hammer horror films aged six as his babysitter passed him cigarettes, and of course Top Of The Pops: "I remember being seven and watching Ian Dury & The Blockheads and Lena Lovich.
  • (14) In 1967 Baker's career took a different turn when he joined Hammer.
  • (15) However, the match would end 2-2 thanks to a last-gasp Leonardo Ulloa penalty awarded after Jeffrey Schlupp went down under pressure from Carroll – something which infuriated the Hammers striker.
  • (16) Fabregas hammers it down the middle, the ball sailing slightly to the left before bulging the net.
  • (17) Global stock markets have fallen sharply on fears that the proposed €110bn (£95bn) rescue package hammered out over the weekend for Greece will not be enough to solve its financial crisis, as well as concern that the problems could spread to other European countries.
  • (18) Work to hammer out the details would begin immediately, Ghani said on Friday.
  • (19) He urged the prime minister, David Cameron, and Osborne to join leaders in Brussels to hammer out a deal.
  • (20) The relationship between final hammer velocity and maximum amplitude of radiated piano sound was investigated.

Poleaxe


Definition:

  • (n.) Anciently, a kind of battle-ax with a long handle; later, an ax or hatchet with a short handle, and a head variously patterned; -- used by soldiers, and also by sailors in boarding a vessel.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The Child Poverty Action Group lists occupations whose incomes will be poleaxed: a nursery nurse loses £1,788, a hospital porter £2,011, a care worker £1,906.
  • (2) Guided by Vikki, in a voice that was part nursery school teacher, part hypnotist, exercises like “the scan”, where you focus on different parts of your body from the crown of your head to the tops on your toes, left me poleaxed, and a convert to more restorative forms of yoga.
  • (3) The West Ham goalkeeper could have no complaints after poleaxing the Leicester striker.
  • (4) Capital spending was poleaxed, storing up a public squalor deficit for the future that will need to be repaid as surely as the fiscal deficit.
  • (5) Weekend reports from Westminster sought to suggest that, even if David Cameron's enemies aren't preparing the poleaxe quite yet, they are sharpening their stilettos.
  • (6) She said: ‘Allison.’ I said: ‘When did you come here?’ She said: ‘I came yesterday.’” Then came a question that poleaxed him.
  • (7) But if things go too wrong for too long, then, as Churchill famously put it, "he must be poleaxed".
  • (8) Standing outside the courtroom in this bright, modern legal centre, he came across as a man in shock, poleaxed by the allegations of domestic abuse, furious that his children had been taken hundreds of miles away from what had been their family home, but also frightened about what the court would say about his right to see them in the future.
  • (9) I couldn’t move for about five minutes after the curtain call; I was just absolutely poleaxed with grief and sadness for this family and the sadness of life at times.
  • (10) But no one quite knew what was happening that first night - December 3 1947 - except that they had been poleaxed.

Words possibly related to "poleaxe"