hammer and tongs, go at it

Engage with great vigor in work, a con- test, a fight, or some other undertaking. This metaphor from the black- smith’s tools—the hammer used to shape hot metal taken from the fire with tongs—replaced an earlier metaphor from the same source, “between the hammer and the anvil,” with a meaning similar to that of BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE. The current expression was in print by 1708 and has been a cliché since the mid-nineteenth century.