Word.ws English Dictionary

hitting the nail on the head

hitting the nail on the head is the present participle and gerund of hit the nail on the head.

Meaning of hit the nail on the head

Verb

hit the nail on the head (third-person singular simple present hits the nail on the head, present participle hitting the nail on the head, simple past and past participle hit the nail on the head)

  1. (idiomatic) To identify something exactly; to arrive at exactly the right answer.
    • He hit the nail on the head when he said the problem was the thermostat.

Questions about hitting the nail on the head

What is hitting the nail on the head the present participle and gerund of?
Hitting the nail on the head is the present participle and gerund of hit the nail on the head.

Words near hitting the nail on the head in the dictionary

  1. hitting the head
  2. hitting the headlines
  3. hitting the high notes
  4. hitting the jackpot
  5. hitting the mark
  6. hitting the nail on the head
  7. hitting the pan
  8. hitting the pavement
  9. hitting the rack
  10. hitting the road
  11. hitting the rocks

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hitting the nail on the head (page history and authors); hit the nail on the head (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hitting the nail on the head.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hitting_the_nail_on_the_head. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.