Definitions

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

  • noun An anvil.
  • noun A forge or smithy.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun An anvil.
  • noun A smithy; a smith's shop; a forge.
  • To forge on an anvil.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To forge on an anvil.
  • noun An anvil.
  • noun A smith's shop; a smithy; a smithery; a forge.

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

  • noun An anvil.
  • noun A blacksmith's smithy or forge.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English stethi, from Old Norse stedhi; see stā- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old Norse steði.

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Examples

  • _] A stithy is the smith's shop, as stith is the anvil.] [Footnote III. 64: _In censure of his seeming.

    Hamlet William Shakespeare 1590

  • Here, on ordinary days, his furnace was seen to blaze, and four half stripped knaves stunned the neighbourhood with the clang of hammer and stithy.

    The Fair Maid of Perth 2008

  • The pure form of the distant mountain, floating in ether, white as foam; the climb above the orchards among fierce shapes of black lava; the snows bathed in light sighing out dragon's breath; the fire-fuming stithy plunging unfathomed from the skies to the core of earth — nothing less, I daresay, seemed worthy of the elements released within them.

    The Mask of Apollo Renault, Mary, 1905-1983 1966

  • To him he says that, if the King's occulted guilt does not come out ( 'unkennel itself'), he (Hamlet) will look upon the apparition as a damned ghost, and (this is new) will think that his 'imaginations are as foul as Vulcan's stithy.'

    Shakspere and Montaigne Jacob Feis

  • The thrall of the mine, and the swart stithy slave,

    Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 Various

  • These were sparks from his great stithy, but a man of industry and talent might have shown them proudly as a lifetime's labour.

    My Contemporaries In Fiction David Christie Murray

  • The Strong Man, too, produced a universal feeling of mingled astonishment and horror, when he laid his head and feet on a couple of separate stools, and then allowed some sturdy smiths to place a stithy on the unsupported part of his body, and hammer a horse-shoe till it was completely made by means of it.

    Chapter IV. Book II 1917

  • Now when Hephaestus heard the bitter tidings, he went his way to the forge, devising evil in the deep of his heart, and set the great anvil on the stithy, and wrought fetters that none might snap or loosen, that the lovers might there unmoveably remain.

    Book VIII Homer 1909

  • It was as if Vulcan's stithy had been dropped down into a profound ravine of the Alps, and the drone of machinery mingled with the music of the fleeting river -- a strange diapason.

    The Princess Passes 1901

  • --- I say to thee, Nazarene, that an accomplished cavalier should know how to dress his steed as well as how to ride him; how to forge his sword upon the stithy, as well as how to use it in battle; how to burnish his arms, as well as how to wear them; and, above all, how to cure wounds as well as how to inflict them. ''

    The Talisman 1894

Comments

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  • Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt

    Do not itself unkennel in one speech,

    It is a damned ghost that we have seen,

    And my imaginations are as foul

    As Vulcan's stithy.

    Hamlet to Horatio, Act III Scene II

    September 25, 2009

  • A fun word to say.

    October 14, 2012

  • Poetasters flog wits with a withy

    To beat out some words that are pithy,

    Or bellow in time

    To the hammer of rhyme,

    Forging lines on the limerick’s stithy.

    November 27, 2018

  • who will have the fithy

    on the little dithy

    who will have the fithy

    when the boat cometh in?

    November 27, 2018

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utkMQJeiK50

    November 27, 2018

  • A remarkable archaeological achievement, bilby. Also reminds me why I don’t want to be a fisherman.

    November 27, 2018