mallet
Americannoun
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mallets
plural
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a hammerlike tool with a head commonly of wood but occasionally of rawhide, plastic, etc., used for driving any tool with a wooden handle, as a chisel, or for striking a surface.
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the wooden implement used to strike the balls in croquet.
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Polo. the long-handled stick, or club, used to drive the ball.
noun
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a tool resembling a hammer but having a large head of wood, copper, lead, leather, etc, used for driving chisels, beating sheet metal, etc
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a long stick with a head like a hammer used to strike the ball in croquet or polo
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a very large powerful steam locomotive with a conventional boiler but with two separate articulated engine units
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of mallet
1375–1425; late Middle English maillet < Middle French, equivalent to mail maul + -et -et
Explanation
A mallet is a tool with a large, barrel-shaped, head — used to pound on something. You might use a mallet to strike an instrument or in playing croquet. Yeah, right. A mallet is a long-handled implement with a barrel-shaped head used in games like croquet or polo. In music, a mallet is a stick with a rounded end that is sometimes padded, used to strike percussion instruments like timpani, bells, or a marimba. Use your yarn or rubber mallets to play the marimba, and use your wooden mallets to play the xylophone.
Vocabulary lists containing mallet
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Chains
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The Shining
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In the book Mr. King specifies that the instrument of destruction is a short roque mallet.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
She used a mallet to pound a metal tube into the rocky sand.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 19, 2026
Alternatively, use a meat mallet to flatten and add a pattern to the cookies.
From Salon ● Dec. 13, 2025
"While wielding the mallet... a shock in my eye, I have to be hospitalised. Retinal detachment," he would write in a memoir years later.
From BBC ● Jan. 7, 2025
Rekh motioned for him to kneel on the mat and, extracting a mallet from the tool rack attached to the table, handed it to him.
From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
At St. Anne School in Santa Monica, I watched Cummins harness the squirmy energy of second-graders wielding xylophone mallets.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 21, 2026
Santoor is a trapezoid-shaped stringed musical instrument, similar to a dulcimer, which is played with mallets.
From BBC ● Jul. 26, 2025
He holds small mallets in his “hands” to play a kind of xylophone called a marimba.
From NewsForKids.net ● Apr. 1, 2024
They distributed xylophone mallets to those waiting in line.
From New York Times ● Feb. 2, 2024
Crossover Bordun: The mallets cross over to play the pattern.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
