Hammett

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Dashiell Hammett was an American writer whose hardboiled crime novels, such as The Maltese Falcon, shaped the modern detective genre
2. The surname of an American novelist famous for gritty detective stories featuring tough, morally ambiguous private investigators
3. A twentieth-century American author of hardboiled mystery fiction, best known for creating the detective Sam Spade

Etymology: Hammett is a surname, and its most famous bearer is the American crime novelist Dashiell Hammett, whose hard-boiled detective fiction made the name widely known. As a surname it is best understood as a diminutive. It is likely built on the medieval personal name Hamo, or Hamon, with the French-derived diminutive ending "-et," so it means something like "little Hamo." Many English surnames formed this way, from given names with added endings. The name has no separate meaning as an English word. Its sense comes entirely from the person or family who bore it, which is why it is capitalised and why its interest lies in the people who carried it rather than in any dictionary sense.