![]() ![]() To go at anything hammer and tongs is to exert similar strength and force to accomplish a goal. A blacksmith uses tongs to hold the hot iron as he pounds and hammers it into shape. Hammer and tongs Forcefully, violently, strenuously energetically, vigorously, wholeheartedly. The Earl rode full tilt at him as though he would have unhorsed him. In use as early as the 1830s, this phrase apparently originally connoted exaggerated or extreme behavior, appearance, etc., based on the following quotation from Frederick Marryat’s Diary in America II (1839): Though blow up a storm appears to be the oldest and still most frequently heard form, up a storm itself is now commonly appended as an adverbial intensifier to many verbs of physical activity-one can work “up a storm,” sing “up a storm,” dance “up a storm,” and so on.įull blast Maximum capacity, strength, volume, or speed full swing often in the phrase in or at full blast. The most plausible explanation says the term comes from jazz trumpeting another holds it stems from the storm of dust raised from the pit floor by the spectacular beating of wings and flurry of movement in a cockfight. The allusion is to the thin sharpened side of a blade, or “edge,” and the blunt side of the same blade, or “back.” Together the two sides constitute the whole of the blade thus the figurative extension in meaning to ‘completely,’ ‘wholeheartedly’ ‘with one’s entire self ’īlow up a storm To engage in any activity with such enthusiasm and vigor as to effect a noticeable change in one’s surroundings also with the implication of being so caught up in the activity as to get carried away one-self.
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