What's the difference between hammer and sledgehammer?

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.

Sledgehammer


Definition:

Example Sentences:

  • (1) When communism collapsed at the end of the 1980s and the sledgehammers started to thud into the Berlin Wall, the future for laissez-faire economics was brighter than it had been since 1914.
  • (2) Damn them and their hands for what they are doing.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest The video, released on Thursday, showed men smashing up artefacts dating back to the seventh century BC Assyrian era, toppling statues from plinths, smashing them with a sledgehammer and breaking up a carving of a winged bull with a drill.
  • (3) Critics describe it as unwieldy, unfocused and unlikely to achieve its aims – a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
  • (4) On one occasion you broke her arm, on another you dislocated her knee with a sledgehammer.
  • (5) But coming down with a sledgehammer on anything that moves makes the government look more like a raging bull than a confident operator playing by the rules.
  • (6) After failing to stall its release altogether, the country's government has set about attacking it with its customary sledgehammer diplomacy.
  • (7) The former Daily Mirror crime reporter, Jeff Edwards, said at the time that Filkin’s report appeared to “have taken a sledgehammer to crack a nut”.
  • (8) My understanding is that more than one person, each with a sledgehammer, were involved.
  • (9) 12.01pm GMT Funding for flood defences were battered by "sledgehammer" cuts to Defra's budget, according to Andrew Parkes, the Labour candidate for Milton Keynes South.
  • (10) The sledgehammers and stilettos of a gendered society impact upon, and are wielded by, every man, woman and child.
  • (11) And last October, a man disguised as a construction worker took a sledgehammer to it.
  • (12) Despite a French military intervention that began in 2013, and the deployment of 10,000 UN peacekeepers across northern Mali, armed fundamentalists continue to be active, and Timbuktu’s mosques prime targets for their sledgehammers.
  • (13) Morrison said he and “the prime minister and the treasurer and others have been sending a very clear and consistent message to those who are saving for their retirement that we don’t think that Labor’s tax sledgehammer on your retirement income earnings is the right thing to do”.
  • (14) A technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine.
  • (15) Directed energy and other weapons of the “future” As for the weaponry, Sledgehammer has used military advisors to ensure its authenticity.
  • (16) Conservationists described the tactic as "using a sledgehammer to crack a nut" and fear that applying the insecticide indiscriminately will kill off other insects including other species of moths and butterflies.
  • (17) Dave Rowntree, an FAC board member and the drummer in Blur, says Mandelson's proposals are akin to trying to "crack a nut with a sledgehammer" .
  • (18) One wears a flat cap, one wields a sledgehammer, one has a welder's visor.
  • (19) "We feel as if we have been hit with a sledgehammer," he said.
  • (20) If it's not Miley Cyrus licking a sledgehammer , it's Robin Thicke cavorting with naked women or Lily Allen having liposuction and getting dancers to twerk for her.

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