sledgehammer

Wikipedia

English

A sledgehammer

Alternative forms

• sledge-hammer

Etymology

sledge +‎ hammer

Pronunciation

• Audio (US)

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Noun

sledgehammer (plural sledgehammers)

1. A hammer that consists of a large, heavy, broad and flat block of metal (the head) attached to a handle typically 0.5 meter to 1 meter long. The sledgehammer's design is meant to allow it to be swung powerfully, and to distribute force over a wide area upon impact.

Translations

kind of hammer

• Chinese: 大錘, 大锤
• Crimean Tatar: toqmaq (in the northern dialect also şoqmar)
• Danish: forhammer
• Dutch: voorhamer (nl) m
• Finnish: leka (fi)
• French: marteau de forgeron m, masse m
• German: Vorschlaghammer m (1)
• Greek: βαρειά f
• Ido: martelego (io)
• Indonesian: palu godam (id)
• Italian: mazza (it) f
• Jèrriais: marté à deux mains m

• Korean: 대형 쇠망치
• Macedonian: токмак (mk) (tókmak) m
• Maltese: mazza (mt) f
• Navajo: bee atsidítsoh
• Norwegian: sleggje (no) f
• Portuguese: marreta f
• Russian: кувалда (ru) (kuválda) f
• Serbo-Croatian: malj (sh) m
• Slovene: macola (sl) f
• Spanish: almádena (es) f
• Swedish: slägga (sv) c
• Turkish: balyoz (tr)

Derived terms

• use a sledgehammer to crack a nut

See also

• hammer
• mallet
• maul

Verb

sledgehammer (third-person singular simple present sledgehammers, present participle sledgehammering, simple past and past participle sledgehammered)

1. To strike with a sledgehammer.
   • 2009 February 22, Jane And Michael Stern, “Nirvana Express”, New York Times:

     She’s trying to piece together shards of precious pottery gleefully sledgehammered by a delegation led by the Taliban ’s minister of culture, who deemed the world’s greatest collection of Central Asian artifacts un-Islamic.