anvil

From Middle English anfilt, anvelt, anfelt, from late Old English anfilt, anfilte, anfealt, from earlier onfilti (“anvil”), from Proto-Germanic *anafeltaz (compare Middle Dutch anvilte, Low German Anfilts, Anefilt, Old High German anafalz), compound of *ana (“on”) + *feltaz (“beaten”) (compare German falzen (“to groove, fold, welt”), Swedish dialectal filta (“to beat”)), from Proto-Indo-European *pelh₂-t- (“shaken, beaten”) (compare Old 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.

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈæn.vəl/, /ˈæn.vɪl/
• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈæn.vɪl/

anvil (plural anvils)

1. A heavy iron block used in the blacksmithing trade as a surface upon which metal can be struck and shaped.
   • 1594, Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, Act I, Scene 4,

     My heart is as an anvil unto sorrow,

     Which beats upon it like the Cyclops’ hammers […]

   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, King John, Act IV, Scene 2,

     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?

   • 1840, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Village Blacksmith” in Ballads and Other Poems, Cambridge, Mass.: John Owens, 2nd edition, 1842, p. 102,

     Thus at the flaming forge of life

     Our fortunes must be wrought;

     Thus on its sounding anvil shaped

     Each burning deed and thought!

   • 1875–1876, Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The Wreck of the Deutschland”, in Robert Bridges, editor, Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Now First Published […], London: Humphrey Milford, published 1918, OCLC 5093462, part 1, stanza 10, page 14:

     With an anvil-ding / And with fire in him forge thy will / Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring / Through him, melt him but master him still: […]

2. (anatomy) An incus bone in the middle ear.
3. A stone or other hard surface used by a bird for breaking the shells of snails.
4. This term needs a definition. Please help out and add a definition, then remove the text {{rfdef}}. Part of a micrometer.

anvil (third-person singular simple present anvils, present participle anvilling, simple past and past participle anvilled)

1. To fashion on an anvil (often used figuratively).
   • 1648, Abraham Cowley, The Foure Ages of England, or, The Iron Age with Other Select Poems, London, Postscript,

     I Have anvil’d out this Iron Age,

     Which I commit, not to your patronage,

     But skill and Art […]

   • 1671, John Ogilby (translator), Atlas Chinensis, London, “A Third Embassy to the Emperor of China and East-Tartary,” p. 291,

     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.

   • 1748, Samuel Richardson, Clarissa, London, Volume 7, Letter 92, p. 341,

     I never started a roguery, that did not come out of thy forge in a manner ready anvilled and hammered for execution […]

• hammer
• ossicle
• stirrup

• anvil on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Alvin, Lavin, Vilna, nival, vinal