/ˈæn.vəl/, /ˈæn.vɪl/, /ˈæn.vɪl/
OriginFrom Middle English anfilt, anvelt, anfelt, from late Old English anfilt, anfilte, anfealt, from earlier onfilti (“anvil”), from Proto-West Germanic *anafalt (compare Middle Dutch anvilte, Low German Anfilts, Anefilt, Old High German anafalz), compound of *ana (“on”) + *falt (“beaten”) (compare German falzen (“to groove, fold, welt”), Swedish dialectal filta (“to beat”)), from Proto-Indo-European *pelh₂-t- (“shaken, beaten”) (compare Middle Irish lethar (“leather”), Latin pellō (“to beat, strike”), Ancient Greek πάλλω (pállō, “to toss, brandish”)), enlargement of Proto-Indo-European *pelh₂- (“to stir, move”). More at felon.
- A heavy iron block used in the blacksmithing trade as a surface upon which metal can be struck and shaped.
“My heart is as an anvil unto sorrow,
Which beats upon it like the Cyclops’ hammers […]”
“I saw a smith stand with his hammer, thus,
The whilst his iron did on the anvil cool,
With open mouth swallowing a tailor’s news […]”
“1794, William Blake, “The Tyger,” lines 15-16,
What the anvil? what dread grasp / Dare its deadly terrors clasp?”
- The incus bone in the middle ear.
- A stone or other hard surface used by a bird for breaking the shells of snails.
- The non-moving surface of a micrometer against which the item to be measured is placed.
- A horizontal-topped mass of cloud, shaped like a blacksmith's anvil, that forms before a thunderstorm.
- figuratively, often, transitiveTo fashion on, or as if on, an anvil.
“I Have anvil’d out this Iron Age,
Which I commit, not to your patronage,
But skill and Art […]”
“The Family Tang caus’d an Iron Pillar to be erected there of three Rods high, and of a proportionable thickness, Anvil’d out of an intire Piece.”
“I never started a roguery, that did not come out of thy forge in a manner ready anvilled and hammered for execution […]”
Formsanvils(plural) · anvils(present, singular, third-person) · anviling(US, participle, present) · anvilling(UK, participle, present) · anviled(US, participle, past) · anviled(US, past) · anvilled(UK, participle, past) · anvilled(UK, past)