the.com/claw hammer
Half the tool drives nails in, half admits you were wrong.
means A hammer with a flat striking face on one side and a curved, split claw on the other for pulling nails back out.
from Straightforward compound of 'claw' (the forked, nail-gripping V) and 'hammer' (from Old English hamor, itself from a Germanic root meaning stone tool — hammers started life as literal rocks). The claw design itself dates back centuries, a simple answer to an obvious problem: whatever drives a nail in should probably also be able to drag one back out.
- name origin
- curved claw pulls nails, no relation to actual claws
- curve geometry
- true curve gives better leverage than framing hammers
- banjo style
- also names a percussive thumb-and-finger picking technique