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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 (gcide)

Axe \Axe\, Axeman \Axe"man\, etc.
See {Ax}, {Axman}.
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Ax \Ax\, Axe \Axe\, ([a^]ks), n. [OE. ax, axe, AS. eax, [ae]x,
acas; akin to D. akse, OS. accus, OHG. acchus, G. axt, Icel.
["o]x, ["o]xi, Sw. yxe, Dan. ["o]kse, Goth. aqizi, Gr.
'axi`nh, L. ascia; not akin to E. acute.]
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.
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Note: The ancient battle-ax had sometimes a double edge.
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Note: The word is used adjectively or in combination; as,
axhead or ax head; ax helve; ax handle; ax shaft;
ax-shaped; axlike.
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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.
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Note: "The spelling ax is better on every ground, of
etymology, phonology, and analogy, than axe, which has
of late become prevalent." --New English Dict.
(Murray).
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