jackhammering

Verb

jackhammer (third-person singular simple present jackhammers, present participle jackhammering, simple past and past participle jackhammered)

1. (intransitive) To use a jackhammer.
   • Early the next day a crew came to fix the street. Vernon was out there at once, watching them jackhammer and haul the asphalt […]1985, Don DeLillo, chapter 33, in White Noise, Penguin, published 1986, page 254
2. (transitive) To break (something) using a jackhammer.
   • The foundations for the barrier had been jackhammered away; the piles of broken concrete were just left alongside the road.1991, Peter Laufer, chapter 9, in Iron Curtain Rising, San Francisco: Mercury House, page 171
3. (transitive) To form (something) using a jackhammer.
   • Small ledges had been jackhammered at each end of the crater and timbers bolted into them, forming abutments of the bridge that was to come.1944, Ernie Pyle, chapter 6, in Brave Men, New York: Henry Holt, page 69
4. (figuratively, intransitive) To move like a jackhammer.
   • […] a bolt of lightning jackhammered across the sky, interrupting his dream.1977, Betsy Haynes, chapter 2, in The Ghost of the Gravestone Hearth, Nashville: Thomas Nelson, page 20
   1. (figuratively, intransitive) To beat hard, to pound. (of the heart or pulse)
      • […] he lay rigid, his heart jackhammering, telling himself that there was nothing out there, nothing […]1995, Margaret Wild, chapter 2, in Beast, New York: Scholastic, page 7
5. (figuratively, transitive) To move (something) like a jackhammer.
   • He […] drew his knees toward his chest as far as the cramped space would allow, and jackhammered his feet into the forward wall of the trunk, which was formed by the backseat of the car.1999, Dean Koontz, chapter 68, in False Memory, New York: Bantam, published 2000, page 611

See all 9 meanings of jackhammer