"if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" meaning in All languages combined

See if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail on Wiktionary

Proverb [English]

Etymology: Likely traditional. In this form, perhaps from Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science, 1966, page 15 and his earlier book Abraham H. Maslow (1962), Toward a Psychology of Being: : I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. Similar concept by Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science, 1964, page 28: : I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding. Labeled "Baruch's Observation" (after Bernard Baruch) in The Complete Murphy's Law: A Definitive Collection (1991) by Arthur Bloch. Also often attributed, without citation, to Mark Twain (for example in Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, page 9). Head templates: {{head|en|proverb}} if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
  1. With limited tools, single-minded people apply them inappropriately or indiscriminately.
    Sense id: en-if_all_you_have_is_a_hammer,_everything_looks_like_a_nail-en-proverb-GO1Y7nBL
  2. If a person is familiar with a certain, single subject, or has with them a certain, single instrument, they may have a confirmation bias to believe that it is the answer to/involved in everything. Related terms: Maslow's hammer, there's more than one way to skin a cat (english: has a somewhat opposite meaning)
    Sense id: en-if_all_you_have_is_a_hammer,_everything_looks_like_a_nail-en-proverb-bH52CMG2 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, English proverbs Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 32 68 Disambiguation of English proverbs: 21 79

Download JSON data for if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail meaning in All languages combined (2.2kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "Likely traditional. In this form, perhaps from Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science, 1966, page 15 and his earlier book\nAbraham H. Maslow (1962), Toward a Psychology of Being:\n: I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.\nSimilar concept by Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science, 1964, page 28:\n: I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.\nLabeled \"Baruch's Observation\" (after Bernard Baruch) in The Complete Murphy's Law: A Definitive Collection (1991) by Arthur Bloch.\nAlso often attributed, without citation, to Mark Twain (for example in Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, page 9).",
  "head_templates": [
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  "pos": "proverb",
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      "glosses": [
        "With limited tools, single-minded people apply them inappropriately or indiscriminately."
      ],
      "id": "en-if_all_you_have_is_a_hammer,_everything_looks_like_a_nail-en-proverb-GO1Y7nBL",
      "links": [
        [
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    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "32 68",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
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          "source": "w+disamb"
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        {
          "_dis": "21 79",
          "kind": "other",
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          "parents": [],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "If a person is familiar with a certain, single subject, or has with them a certain, single instrument, they may have a confirmation bias to believe that it is the answer to/involved in everything."
      ],
      "id": "en-if_all_you_have_is_a_hammer,_everything_looks_like_a_nail-en-proverb-bH52CMG2",
      "links": [
        [
          "confirmation bias",
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        {
          "_dis1": "17 83",
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        {
          "_dis1": "17 83",
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          "word": "there's more than one way to skin a cat"
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  "word": "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
}
{
  "categories": [
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    "English multiword terms",
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  ],
  "etymology_text": "Likely traditional. In this form, perhaps from Abraham Maslow, The Psychology of Science, 1966, page 15 and his earlier book\nAbraham H. Maslow (1962), Toward a Psychology of Being:\n: I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.\nSimilar concept by Abraham Kaplan, The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science, 1964, page 28:\n: I call it the law of the instrument, and it may be formulated as follows: Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.\nLabeled \"Baruch's Observation\" (after Bernard Baruch) in The Complete Murphy's Law: A Definitive Collection (1991) by Arthur Bloch.\nAlso often attributed, without citation, to Mark Twain (for example in Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind, page 9).",
  "head_templates": [
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        "2": "proverb"
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      "expansion": "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "proverb",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "Maslow's hammer"
    },
    {
      "english": "has a somewhat opposite meaning",
      "word": "there's more than one way to skin a cat"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "glosses": [
        "With limited tools, single-minded people apply them inappropriately or indiscriminately."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "single-minded",
          "single-minded"
        ]
      ]
    },
    {
      "glosses": [
        "If a person is familiar with a certain, single subject, or has with them a certain, single instrument, they may have a confirmation bias to believe that it is the answer to/involved in everything."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "confirmation bias",
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        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "wikipedia": [
    "Law of the instrument",
    "law of the instrument"
  ],
  "word": "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (ae36afe and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.