The language of the smithy

To recognise the impact working in iron has had on our society, one just needs to look a little closer at some phrases in the english language. These have been derived from smithing terms and have been adopted to mean other things. They are used every day by people who may not neccesarily know the origional context.

• Strike while the iron is hot: To act while opportunity exists. Obviously this relates to smithng as you litteriraly have to strike the iron while it is hot in order to change the form of it without introducing stress fractures
• Lose your temper: To become angry which often results in not being useful in a given situation. When a tool loses it's temper, here it means the hardness or flexibility of the steel it becomes unusable or breaks. 
• Quench your thirst: when you are thirsty, your throat feels hot, when you drink it cools it down. This is reflected in ironwork where hot metal is quenched in water.
• To draw something out: To make longer, normally in relation to time, to draw out a story for example. In metalwork when you hammer a section thinner, it also gets longer, this is called drawing it out.
• Forging ahead: To continue on a given path with conviction. Forge and forging have many meanings in both everyday life and in metal craft. To forge generally means to change the shape of something with a hammer, it can also mean a skillful fake. Perhaps the definition of a fake came from people bringing smiths an object for them to copy and they would forge one out. Ideas and forms in metal work spread rapidly, very likely by this method. Forge is also used to describe the heat source used by the smith.
• Upset: To tip something over. I am not certain if this originated in the smithy or if it just came to be used in this way but in smithing, to upset is to turn a piece on it's axis and hammer it in order to increase it's width
• Overwrought: To have too many emotions at once to deal with, often feeling overwrought means you feel about to break. Overwrought in smithing is metal which has litterally been worked too much, to the point of breaking

I am sure more will occur to me, suffice to say ironwork is central to our culture, even if most of us have never seen a forge, anvil or hammer being used.