Word.ws English Dictionary

yellow hammer

yellow hammer noun: a curve ball, especially a breaking curve that is particularly difficult to hit.

Noun

yellow hammer (plural yellow hammers)

  1. A curve ball, especially a breaking curve that is particularly difficult to hit.
    • Watching the ballgame today someone broke off a real good curve and I said, "That was a real yellow hammer."1970, Jim Bouton, Ball Four, page 341
    • Williams, getting steady doses of Koufax's "yellow hammer," struck out looking at a curve, Sandy's fifth K.2004, Michael Coffey, 27 Men Out: Baseball's Perfect Games, updated edition, page 106

Forms of yellow hammer

pluralyellow hammers

Origin of yellow hammer

The origin is uncertain.

Questions about yellow hammer

What does yellow hammer mean?
Yellow hammer means a curve ball, especially a breaking curve that is particularly difficult to hit.
What part of speech is yellow hammer?
Yellow hammer is a noun.
What is the plural of yellow hammer?
The plural of yellow hammer is yellow hammers.

Words near yellow hammer in the dictionary

  1. yellow goats
  2. yellow gold
  3. yellow goods
  4. yellow grease
  5. yellow gum
  6. yellow hammer
  7. yellow hammers
  8. yellow harlequin
  9. yellow harlequins
  10. yellow hill ant
  11. yellow hill ants

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: yellow hammer (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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