Axe

How to spell axe

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce axe

What does axe mean?

1. nounA tool with a heavy bladed head on a handle, used for chopping wood or felling trees.
2. verbTo abruptly cut back, abolish, or dismiss something such as jobs, funding, or a project.

Axe in a sentence

• noun

  He kept a sharp axe beside the woodpile for splitting logs.

• verb

  The company plans to axe hundreds of roles to reduce costs.

• noun

  The firefighter used an axe to break through the locked door.

• verb

  Budget cuts forced the council to axe the weekend bus service.

Where does axe come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word descends from the Old English æx (also written acas), the native Anglo-Saxon name for a bladed chopping tool, and it has close cousins across the Germanic languages, including the Old High German ackus and the Old Norse øx. All of these trace back to a shared Proto-Germanic form and ultimately to a very old Indo-European root meaning 'sharp' or 'cutting edge', the same family that gives Latin its ascia for a carpenter's adze. The word has named the wood-splitting and tree-felling tool continuously for well over a thousand years, which makes it one of the oldest items in the everyday English vocabulary. The figurative verb sense, meaning to cut back or abolish something such as jobs or funding, grew up much later and feels strongly modern. The spelling has wobbled between 'ax' and 'axe' for centuries; 'axe' became the settled British form, while American writers often use 'ax', and the lingering silent -e is the small trap that catches people who expect the shorter spelling.

How the word is built

• axe (single root from Old English æx, a chopping tool); no prefix or suffix, the silent -e is a later spelling convention

British and American spelling

Axe is the British spelling. American English spells it ax.