Word.ws English Dictionary

nail the hammer on the head

nail the hammer on the head is the nonstandard form 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.

Forms of nail the hammer on the head

third-person singular presentnails the hammer on the head
present participlenailing the hammer on the head
past participlenailed the hammer on the head
pastnailed the hammer on the head

Questions about nail the hammer on the head

What is nail the hammer on the head the nonstandard form of?
Nail the hammer on the head is the nonstandard form of hit the nail on the head.

Words near nail the hammer on the head in the dictionary

  1. nail sickness
  2. nail someone to the wall
  3. nail tech
  4. nail technician
  5. nail technicians
  6. nail the hammer on the head
  7. nail to the counter
  8. nail trimmer
  9. nail trimmers
  10. nail varnish
  11. nail varnishes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: nail the hammer 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-nail the hammer on the head.ogg.

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