ax

• 

  SPEARS, LANCES, AX AND CHAIN
• WordNet 3.6
  • v ax terminate "The NSF axed the research program and stopped funding it"
  • v ax chop or split with an ax "axe wood"
  • n ax an edge tool with a heavy bladed head mounted across a handle
  • ***

Additional illustrations & photos:

Ax. Shingling Hatchet. , Carpenter's Adze

Example. To cut with an ax

• Interesting fact: The first person to die in the electric chair was William Kemmler, an ax murderer from New York on August 6, 1890
• • n Ax ăks 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.The ancient battle-ax had sometimes a double edge.
  • v. t. & i Ax ăks To ask; to inquire or inquire of.☞ This word is from Saxon, and is as old as the English language. Formerly it was in good use, but now is regarded as a vulgarism. It is still dialectic in England, and is sometimes heard among the uneducated in the United States. “And Pilate axide him, Art thou king of Jewis?” “Or if he axea fish.” Wyclif. 'bdThe king axed after your Grace's welfare.” Pegge.
  • ***

• Interesting fact: The guillotine was originally called a louisette. Named for Antoine Louis, the French surgeon who invented it. It became known as the guillotine for Joseph Ignace Guillotin, the French physician who advocated it as a more merciful means of execution than the noose or ax.
• • n ax An instrument used for hewing timber and chopping wood, and also as a weapon of offense. The modern ax consists of a head of iron, with an arching edge of steel, and a helve or handle. The edge is in the plane of the sweep of the tool, thus differing from the adz, in which the edge is at right angles to the plane of the sweep. As a weapon, the ax was in very common use from the earliest times until the general adoption of firearms. It was used by the Egyptians. By the Greeks it was looked upon as a weapon of their own ancestors and of the Asiatic nations, and so figured in works of Greek art. The northern nations who overthrew the Roman empire used many varieties of this weapon, and its use prevailed throughout the middle ages in Europe. A light ax was common among the Arabs and Moors. Axes of various kinds of stone, or entirely of copper or bronze, are found among prehistoric and ancient remains, and in use by barbarous races. See celt.
  • ax To shape or trim with an ax.
  • n ax An axle; an axis.
  • ax Obsolete or dialectal forms of ask.
  • ***

• • n Ax a well-known tool or instrument for hewing or chopping, usually of iron with a steel edge
  • ***

• Robert Osborne

  

  “America once had the clarity of the pioneer ax.”
• Anne Bradstreet

  

  “Authority without wisdom is like a heavy ax without an edge, fitter to bruise than to polish.”
• Albert Einstein

  

  “Technological progress is like an ax in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
• Henry Ward Beecher

  

  “A grindstone that had not grit in it, how long would it take to sharpen an ax? And affairs that had not grit in them, how long would they take to make a man?”
• Abraham Lincoln

  

  “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my ax.”

In literature:

In poetry:

In news:

In science: