Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A wrestling hold in which the opponent's arm is pulled behind the back and twisted upward.
  • noun Overwhelming dominance.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A hold, in wrestling, in which an opponent's arm is twisted up behind his back; an armlock

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a wrestling hold in which the opponent's arm is twisted up behind his back

Etymologies

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Examples

  • You may despair that the rationality required to face up to reality will never overcome the fundamentalism, know-nothingism and magic thinking that has a hammerlock on our national psyche.

    Marty Kaplan: Pessimism Is the Last Taboo Marty Kaplan 2011

  • Alaa Abd El Fattah, an activist and well known political blogger in Cairo, toldDemocracy Now that the crowd “could continue to escalate, either by claiming more places or by actually moving inside these buildings, if the need comes.” With the economy choking to death, the demonstrators were now moving to put a hammerlock on the government apparatus itself.

    Michael Schwartz: The (Sometimes) Incredible Power of Nonviolent Protest Michael Schwartz 2011

  • RUDIN: No, and that's one that the Democrats should have run away with, and that's the one with Richard Blumenthal, the state attorney general, against Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive, who seems to have a hammerlock on him going into November 2nd.

    Political Attack Ads Work, But Are They True? 2010

  • The realist in me has the optimist in me in a hammerlock.

    Ugly politics: How low can we go? 2010

  • But as the year goes on, we'll try to break some of that hammerlock, both so that environmental review can go forward, and so that we can stop wasting taxpayer money on subsidies and handouts to the industry.

    Keystone XL Pipeline: Obama Administration Announcing It Will Not Go Forward With Controversial Plan 2012

  • RUDIN: No, and that's one that the Democrats should have run away with, and that's the one with Richard Blumenthal, the state attorney general, against Linda McMahon, the former wrestling executive, who seems to have a hammerlock on him going into November 2nd.

    Political Attack Ads Work, But Are They True? 2010

  • We need to break the hammerlock of the East Coast, particularly the Ivies, on power in this country.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » A New York Court? 2010

  • Brokers don't like the fact that the combined group will have a hammerlock on Europe's futures markets—which they say makes it tougher for newcomers and raises the specter of high fees.

    The Future of Exchanges Is Now Jacob Bunge 2011

  • You may despair that the rationality required to face up to reality will never overcome the fundamentalism, know-nothingism and magic thinking that has a hammerlock on our national psyche.

    Marty Kaplan: Pessimism Is the Last Taboo Marty Kaplan 2011

  • Given the hammerlock that Visa, Mastercard and American Express have on the market, the only sure way to prevent them from charging excessive fees and earning monopoly-like profits is through direct regulation.

    Credit card companies figure out how to spin straw into gold Steven Pearlstein 2011

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  • "Free-trade advocates also complain, saying that a private business has used the shelter of the federal sugar program, created in the Depression to nurture struggling farmers, to increase its corporate hammerlock."

    The New York Times, Helping the Everglades, or Big Sugar?, by Mary Williams Walsh, September 13, 2008

    September 14, 2008