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View synonyms for anvil

anvil

[ an-vil ]

noun

  1. a heavy iron block with a smooth face, frequently of steel, on which metals, usually heated until soft, are hammered into desired shapes.
  2. anything having a similar form or use.
  3. the fixed jaw in certain measuring instruments.
  4. Also called anvil cloud,. Meteorology. incus ( def 2 ).
  5. a musical percussion instrument having steel bars that are struck with a wooden or metal beater.
  6. Anatomy. incus ( def 1 ).


anvil

/ ˈænvɪl /

noun

  1. a heavy iron or steel block on which metals are hammered during forging
  2. any part having a similar shape or function, such as the lower part of a telegraph key
  3. the fixed jaw of a measurement device against which the piece to be measured is held
  4. See incus
    anatomy the nontechnical name for incus


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Word History and Origins

Origin of anvil1

before 900; Middle English anvelt, anfelt, Old English anfilt ( e ), anfealt; cognate with Middle Dutch anvilte, Old High German anafalz. See on, felt 2

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Word History and Origins

Origin of anvil1

Old English anfealt; related to Old High German anafalz, Middle Dutch anvilte; see on , felt ²

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Example Sentences

These clouds feature pouch-like appendages that sometimes hang beneath the anvil of intense thunderstorms.

Researchers aren’t just making superionic ice to play with diamond anvils.

Earlier this year they predicted the conditions under which one metal that might have formed between the diamond anvils should superconduct, and they found different behavior.

Add too much, and the sample will act too much like metallic hydrogen, metalizing only at pressures that will crack your diamond anvil.

Progress took off in the 2000s, when supercomputer simulations let theorists predict the properties of various hydrides, and the widespread use of compact diamond anvils let experimentalists squeeze the most promising candidates to test their mettle.

INSIDER TIP: Anvil is not for the faint of wallet: fresh ingredients set imbibers back $8-$12 per cocktail.

Murmelstein was stuck with a thankless and impossible job, caught between the hammer and the anvil, as he tells us.

He seems relieved—like an anvil has been lifted from his shoulders—and so are we.

Where were you when the coalition hammer delivered Operation Noble Anvil?

If we had these rules, everybody would have known what was going on at JPMorgan Chase long before the anvil dropped on their head.

His tombstone in the churchyard consists of an anvil and hammer, wrought in stone.

We readily recognise the fact that when a hammer falls often on an anvil it heats itself and the metal on which it strikes.

The next moment Tom's hammer was making lively music upon his anvil, and Eddie was again on his way to school.

A few minutes after the blacksmith left me, I heard the hammer sounding upon the anvil in one of the caverns below.

In accompaniment, some one was beating softly on the anvil, and the bellows were blowing rhythmically.

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