Saxon

How to spell saxon

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce saxon

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does saxon mean?

1. nounA member of a Germanic people who settled in parts of England and continental Europe in the early medieval period.
2. adjectiveRelating to the Saxons, their language, or their period of history.

Saxon in a sentence

• noun

  The museum exhibit traced how each saxon settled along the river valleys.

• adjective

  The church still has a saxon tower built long before the Norman conquest.

• noun

  The historian argued that one saxon warrior could carry a long knife into battle.

• adjective

  Researchers studied the saxon burial mound on the edge of the farm.

Where does saxon come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin Saxones, the name Roman and later writers gave to a group of Germanic peoples living in what is now northern Germany. The Latin form itself drew on the people's own Germanic name, which many scholars connect to the word for a short cutting blade or knife, possibly the seax or sax that the warriors carried, so the name may once have meant something like 'the knife-men'. After the fall of Roman Britain, these Saxons crossed the North Sea and settled in southern England, and the Old English Seaxe gave us the modern spelling. The word survives in English place names and in 'Anglo-Saxon', the label for the combined Germanic settlers and their language. The same root also lies behind 'Sussex', 'Essex', and 'Wessex', which preserve the old regional divisions of the South, East, and West Saxons.

How the word is built

• Saxon (from Latin Saxo, plural Saxones, a Germanic people)
• adapted into English as a single root word