axe
pronunciation
How to pronounce axe in British English:
UK [æks]
How to pronounce axe in American English:
US [æks]
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- Noun:
- an edge tool with a heavy bladed head mounted across a handle
-
- Verb:
- chop or split with an ax
- terminate
Word Origin
- axe
- axe: [OE] Relatives of the word axe are widespread throughout the Indo-European languages, from German axt and Dutch aaks to Latin ascia and Greek axínē. These point back to a hypothetical Indo-European *agwesī or *akusī, which denoted some sort of cutting or hewing tool. The Old English form was æx, and there is actually no historical justification for the modern British spelling axe, which first appeared in the late 14th century; as late as 1885 the Oxford English Dictionary made ax its main form, and it remains so in the USA.
- axe (n.)
- Old English æces (Northumbrian acas) "axe, pickaxe, hatchet," later æx, from Proto-Germanic *akusjo (cognates: Old Saxon accus, Old Norse ex, Old Frisian axe, German Axt, Gothic aqizi), from PIE *agw(e)si- (cognates: Greek axine, Latin ascia). The spelling ax is better on every ground, of etymology, phonology, and analogy, than axe, which became prevalent during the 19th century; but it is now disused in Britain. [OED] The spelling ax, though "better on every ground, of etymology, phonology, & analogy" (OED), is so strange to 20th-c. eyes that it suggests pedantry & is unlikely to be restored. [Fowler] Meaning "musical instrument" is 1955, originally jazz slang for the saxophone; rock slang for "guitar" dates to 1967. The axe in figurative sense of cutting of anything (expenses, workers, etc.), especially as a cost-saving measure, is from 1922, probably from the notion of the headman's literal axe (itself attested from mid-15c.). To have an axe to grind is from an 1815 essay by U.S. editor and politician Charles Miner (1780-1865) in which a man flatters a boy and gets him to do the chore of axe-grinding for him, then leaves without offering thanks or recompense. Misattributed to Benjamin Franklin in Weekley, OED print edition, and many other sources.
- axe (v.)
- 1670s, "to shape or cut with an axe," from axe (n.). Meaning "to remove, severely reduce," usually figurative, recorded by 1922. Related: Axed; axing.
Example
- 1. When the axe fell , it was sharper than expected .
- 2. The secretary 's axe now threatens to slow the state 's economic recovery .
- 3. The axe will fall on the whitehall bureaucracy .
- 4. He also voted for a republican budget that sought to axe the entire commerce department .
- 5. As california wrestles with a horrendous budget deficit , the axe hangs over almost every area of state spending , from welfare to education .