DICT.TW Dictionary Taiwan
Ax, Axe, n. A tool or instrument of steel, or of iron with a steel edge or blade, for felling trees, chopping and splitting wood, hewing timber, etc. It is wielded by a wooden helve or handle, so fixed in a socket or eye as to be in the same plane with the blade. The broadax, or carpenter's ax, is an ax for hewing timber, made heavier than the chopping ax, and with a broader and thinner blade and a shorter handle.
Note: The ancient battle-ax had sometimes a double edge.
Note: ☞ The word is used adjectively or in combination; as, axhead or ax head; ax helve; ax handle; ax shaft; ax-shaped; axlike.
Note: This word was originally spelt with e, axe; and so also was nearly every corresponding word of one syllable: as, flaxe, taxe, waxe, sixe, mixe, pixe, oxe, fluxe, etc. This superfluous e is not dropped; so that, in more than a hundred words ending in x, no one thinks of retaining the e except in axe. Analogy requires its exclusion here.
Note: “The spelling ax is better on every ground, of etymology, phonology, and analogy, than axe, which has of late become prevalent.”
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Axe Axe·man etc. See Ax, Axman.
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axe
n : an edge tool with a heavy bladed head mounted across a
handle [syn: ax]
v 1: chop or split with an ax; "axe wood" [syn: ax]
2: terminate; "The NSF axed the research program and stopped
funding it" [syn: ax]
Axe
used in the Authorized Version of Deut. 19:5; 20:19; 1 Kings
6:7, as the translation of a Hebrew word which means "chopping."
It was used for felling trees (Isa. 10:34) and hewing timber for
building. It is the rendering of a different word in Judg. 9:48,
1 Sam. 13:20, 21, Ps. 74:5, which refers to its sharpness. In 2
Kings 6:5 it is the translation of a word used with reference to
its being made of iron. In Isa. 44:12 the Revised Version
renders by "axe" the Hebrew _maatsad_, which means a "hewing"
instrument. In the Authorized Version it is rendered "tongs." It
is also used in Jer. 10:3, and rendered "axe." The "battle-axe"
(army of Medes and Persians) mentioned in Jer. 51:20 was
probably, as noted in the margin of the Revised Version, a
"maul" or heavy mace. In Ps. 74:6 the word so rendered means
"feller." (See the figurative expression in Matt. 3:10; Luke
3:9.)