the.com/war hammer

means A heavy medieval weapon with a hammerhead on one side and often a spike or beak on the other, designed to crush or pierce plate armor that swords couldn't cut.

from A plain compound of "war" and "hammer" — and the second word is the older tale. "Hammer" traces back through Old English "hamor" to a Proto-Germanic root that may originally have meant "stone" or "stone tool," a memory of the days when a hammer was simply a useful rock; it's possibly related to words for crag and cliff in neighboring languages. "War" comes via Old North French "werre" from a Frankish word for confusion or strife — a cousin of "worse." So the name reads, almost literally, as "the strife-stone": an ancient tool turned, predictably, toward braining one's neighbor.