Here’s how all the stuff in your garage, shed, and on the truck got their names.

CHISEL

Along with the gentle or aggressive tapping of a hammer, a chisel is used to chip away into very hard surfaces like stone or bricks. In a very slow, even indirect way, chisel cuts into stone, so it makes sense that it’s a variation on an old word from Latin, caedere, which means “to cut.” (Another cutting tool, scissors, shares the same root word.)

HAMMER

In a language that modern day linguists call Proto-Germanic, which spread through Scandinavia around the 3rd century B.C., the word hamaraz, which referred to any tool with a stone head. (In other words, what we today would call a hammer.) As other languages developed out of Proto-Germanic throughout Europe, hamaraz influenced other words, such as hamer in Dutch, hamar in Old German, and hamor in Old English, which evolved into hammer.

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SLEDGEHAMMER

Taking it back to its original, separate root words, this large tool consisting of a heavy metal head on a large wooden handle translates to “to strike with great force with a heavy stone.” The “-hammer” part comes from hammer, of course (see above), while the “sledge-“ has its origins in slaegan, a centuries-old Anglo-Saxon word that means “to strike with great force.”

JACKHAMMER

It’s not named after anybody named Jack. “Jack” is a slang term that means “guy” or “common man,” which dates to 14^th century English. Men’s propensity for physical labor led to any sort of mechanical device or tool being referred to as a jack. (One way that’s lasted: the jack that helps in the changing of a tire.) The jackhammer got its name because it’s a mechanical tool that hammers at the ground (and breaks it apart).

BEVEL

The name of this angle-measuring tool is an English version of the French word biveau, which comes from the Latin word batare, which means “to yawn.” In other words, a bevel in use gapes open, and looks like a yawning mouth.