hammered

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of hammer.

   He hammered the tent stakes deep into the rocky ground.

   The silver had been hammered until it was paper-thin.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs: the plain past (she hammered the nail) and the participle after have or be (it had been hammered flat). It carries every sense of the verb, not just the workshop one. A speaker hammered a point by repeating it, a rider hammered down the road, and a heart hammered in the chest. Placed before a noun, it shades into the "struck with a hammer" adjective.

2. 2
   adjectiveslangCanadaUK

   Very drunk; heavily intoxicated.

   She got so hammered at the office party that her colleagues called her a cab.

   The whole stag do ended with everyone completely hammered by midnight.

   Similardrunk, wasted, smashed, plastered, sloshed

   Oppositesober

   Note

   This is slang of the UK and Canada. It belongs in casual talk and is out of place in formal writing. It works most naturally after be or get rather than before a noun, as in Candice Carty-Williams's Queenie (2019): "I was hammered." It grades like any adjective (more hammered, most hammered). Context keeps it apart from the literal "struck" sense: a hammered guest is drunk, not dented.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having been struck or shaped with a hammer or a hammer-like object.

   A blacksmith arranged the hammered iron hooks along the workshop wall.

   The old gate was rough and hammered, dented from decades of repair.

   Similarbeaten, wrought, forged

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