Also 9 bick-, beck-iron. [A corruption of BICKERN (= F. bigorne, It. bicornia, an anvil with two pointed extremities), altered first in form, and then in sense, by popular etymology.] The pike or taper end of a blacksmith’s anvil.
1667. Moxon, Mech. Exerc. (1703), 3. A Black Smith’s Anvil … is sometimes made with a Pike, or Bickern, or Beak-iron, at one end of it.
1831. J. Holland, Manuf. Metals, I. 160. The furniture of a blacksmith’s shop … comprising … vice, anvil with bick-iron, etc. Ibid., II. 39. A little beaked anvil, called a beck-iron.
