Peen

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /piːn/

Definitions

1. A specialized part of a hammer that is positioned opposite the striking face, often formed like a wedge or sphere for various metalworking purposes
2. A component found on a hammer's head, located at the opposite end of the striking surface, and designed in various shapes for specific tasks in shaping materials
3. The end of a hammer head used for shaping or finishing metal surfaces

Etymology: The hammer sense of "peen" is one of English's quiet hand-me-downs from the Vikings' linguistic cousins. Its likely ancestors are North Germanic words for a peg or pin, such as Danish "pind" ("peg") and Norwegian dialect "penn", which points to the tapering, pointed end of a hammer as the original image. German "Pinne" carries the same idea, and Old Swedish "pæna" meant to pound iron with a hammer, suggesting the verb came first and the tool name followed from the action. The word's other, far more notorious sense has a different and much later story. It is a clipping of "penis", with the spelling altered so that it kept the original pronunciation while looking distinct. This makes the hammer meaning and the anatomical one unrelated in origin, despite the identical sound. The rare spelling in the hammer sense is therefore not a coincidence of usage but a result of this later clipping, which has made the hammer term easy to misread.