sledgehammer

Compound of sledge +‎ hammer.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈslɛd͡ʒhæmə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈslɛd͡ʒhæmɚ/

• Audio (General American):

  (file)

• Hyphenation: sledge‧ham‧mer

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.
   • 1846 October 1 – 1848 April 1, Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son, London: Bradbury and Evans, , published 1848, →OCLC:

     These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long.

• sledge-hammer

• mallet
• maul

• use a sledgehammer to crack a nut

• forehammer
• hammer

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

1. (transitive) To strike (something) with a sledgehammer.
   • 1989 December 10, Clyde H. Farnsworth, “Japan's Loud Voice in Washington”, in The New York Times‎:

     Some lawmakers were so incensed that they even invited the news media to watch the sledgehammering of the Japanese company's products on the Capitol's steps.

   • 2009 February 22, Jane And Michael Stern, “Nirvana Express”, in The 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.

sledgehammer (comparative more sledgehammer, superlative most sledgehammer)

1. Completely lacking grace and dexterity.
   • 2015 October 26, Michael Boyer, “Brave new world of cancer treatment revealed”, in The University of Sydney‎:

     Promising new treatments avoid the sledgehammer approach of traditional chemotherapy in two key ways."

• shotgun approach

• sledgehammer on Wikipedia.Wikipedia