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noun, verb, -viled, -viling or (especially British) -villed, -villing.
noun 1. an iron or steel block on which metals are hammered and shaped.
2. anything resembling a blacksmith's anvil in shape or use, such as the fixed jaw of a measuring instrument or steel bars struck like a blacksmith's anvil.
△Ex. (Figurative.) The hero was hardened on the anvil of war.
3. the incus, a bone of the middle ear.
v.t. to fashion on or as if on an anvil; hammer out (used chiefly in figurative connotations).