Idioms for Idiots: "You Hit the Hammer on the Head"

As requested by Nathan in a previous post, here is my new segment: Idioms for Idiots. This is where I will take a misquoted idiom, explain the meaning and origin of both the correct idiom and the misquoted version.

"You hit the HAMMER on the head"

The correct idiom is, "You hit the NAIL on the head". The exact origin of this idiom is unknown, however, it first appears in ca 1438 in The Book of Margery Kempe.


"You hit the HAMMER on the head" is a phrase that originated in Salem, MA 1692-1693. While it is a wide known fact that in a religious mass hysteria, the Puritan based town held witch trials based on wild accusations that resulted in a couple dozen of its citizens being hanged.

It is less known that Puritans also used the idiom, "you hit the HAMMER on the head" whenever a persons witch-i-ness was ever brought into question. As was proven in Monty Python, everyone now knows that witches were believed to be made out of wood. The Puritans would take a hammer and smash it into the skull of an accused witch. If the accused was not a witch, the hammer would break her skull. If they were a witch, then their skull would not crack and everyone would hear the solid sound that echoes as a hammer strikes a solid 2x4.

This was often considered more humane than hanging an individual because the hammer would not always kill the innocent and would only cause mild to severe brain damage. Another benefit of this method was that the brain damage of those who survived would often cause them to have no recollection of the trial that they were just falsely convicted in.

Thus if someone says to you, "you hit the HAMMER on the head" you now know that the person is making reference to your merciful and slightly more humane way of exposing the devils witchcraft - the sole threat of our Christian values.