Axe or Ax (pronounced aks)
(1) An
instrument with a bladed head on a handle or helve, used for hewing, cleaving,
chopping etc. Axes appear to date from
circa 6000 BC.
(2) In
the slang of jazz musicians, various musical instruments.
(3) In
slang, dismissal from employment.
(4) In
slang, any usually summary removal or curtailment.
(5) In
rock music, twelve or (especially) six-string electric guitars, a device with
both is called a “doubleneck”.
Pre 1000: From the Middle English ax, axe, ex & exe (edged instrument for hewing timber and chopping wood; battle weapon), from the Old English æx and æces (ie ces (the Northumbrian acas)) (axe, pickaxe, hatchet), from the Proto-Germanic akusjo, related to the Old Frisian axa. All were akin to the Gothic aquizi, the Old Norse øx & ǫx, the Old Frisian axe, the Old High German accus, acchus, akus & ackus (from which modern German gained Axt) and the Middle High German plural exa. Source was the Germanic akwiz, (which existed variously as akuz, aksi, ákəs, áks) from the Latin acsiā and the Ancient Greek axī́nē, from the primitive Indo-European agwsi & agwsi- (axe). The word hatchet (a smaller axe) was an imperfect echoic, an evolution of the earlier axxette. Squabbles surrounded the spelling in the twentieth century and in Modern English Usage (1926), Henry Fowler (1858-1933) noted with regret that while ax, though “…better on every ground, of etymology, phonology and analogy” appeared so strange to modern eyes that “…it suggests pedantry and is unlikely to be restored.” The phrase "my grandfather's axe" explores the nature of authenticity, the expanded quotation being "This is my grandfather's axe; my father replaced the handle and I replaced the head."
The Axeman Cometh: Eighteenth century line engraving of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587; Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland 1542-1567) at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire, 8 February 1587. Perhaps remarkably, this image is available as a greeting card.
Although there was a long history of regicide, this was the first lawfully sanctioned killing of an anointed European monarch but it joined the roll call of botched executions, the decapitation requiring three blows with the axe rather than the “best practice” single strike. The executioner’s first blow was misdirected and struck the back of her head and although the second almost completely severed the neck, a third attempt was needed for a last, recalcitrant piece of sinew. Following protocol, the executioner took the head by the hair and held it aloft and spoke the words: “God save the Queen” (Elizabeth I (1533–1603; Queen of England & Ireland 1558-1603). At that moment, it was revealed the luxuriant auburn tresses in his hand were part of a wig and the head tumbled to the floor, the deceased 44 year old having cropped, grey hair. The reports of the aftermath of her death are contradictory with one account saying as she lay dead, a tiny dog she’d concealed in her petticoats scrambled from the folds, curled up in a pool of her blood and died but what is not disputed is the garment’s fabric was velvet in crimson brown, the liturgical colour of martyrdom in the Roman Catholic Church to which she’d remained attached. Her last words were: “In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum” (Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit).2009.
The sense of an axe as a "musical instrument" dates from 1955, originally from the jazz scene where it referred to the saxophone, the now more common use to describe electric guitars emerging only in the summer of love (1967). The phrase "to have an axe to grind" was first used in 1810 in a matter involving the US politician Charles Miner (1780-1865) but has since the late nineteenth century been often misattributed since to Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), the latter in this case a victim of the phenomenon of "quotation celebrity" which affects also figures such as William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955). In the case of the bard that always seems strange because all his words exist in print but it does seem that when some see a familiar fragment containing a word like "hath", they assume it comes from Shakespeare.
An Auburn haired Lindsay Lohan in crop top, AXE Lounge, Southampton, New York, June 2009.
Battleaxes (don't call them old). Bronwyn Bishop (b 1942) (left), Nancy Pelosi (b 1940) (centre) & crooked Hillary Clinton (b 1947) (right).
The verb axe dates from the 1670s in the sense of "to shape or cut with an axe" and was a direct development from the noun. The figurative use meaning "to remove" (a person, from a position) or "severely reduce" (expenditure) began circa 1923 and soon extended to the sense of severely cutting the levels of anything to do with money. Surprisingly, there seems to be no reference to the noun axe-handle or ax-handle prior to 1798. The noun battleaxe (also as battle-axe & battle-ax) was a military term which referred specifically to a weapon of war, typically a double headed device which cut when swung in either direction although, despite the way they're often depicted in popular culture, they weren't always large and heavy, something not surprising given soldiers' traditional preference for lightweight tools. The figurative sense meaning "formidable woman" was US slang, dating from 1896. Unlike most gender-loaded (this one by historical association) terms, it may in some circumstances be still OK to use because "formidable" does have positive connotations although anyone brave enough to try might be well-advised to field "battleaxe" rather than "old battleaxe" and let it do its work synecdochally.
Comrade Stalin (left), an ice axe (centre) and comrade Trotsky (right).
Comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940; founder of the Fourth International) in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (1936) had a feeling for the political phrase and labelled the state created by comrade Joseph Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) a “Soviet Thermidor” because although Tsarist era capitalism wasn’t re-created (a la the monarchy in France not being restored in the 1790s), the combination of a bureaucracy supporting a personality cult (even if the latter was in 1936 still somewhat disguised) was “a counterrevolutionary regression” which betrayed what was achieved by comrade Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924; head of government of Russia or Soviet Union 1917-1924) between 1917-1924. The phrase caught the imagination of many, notably those in the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (The POUM, the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification), a non-communist Marxist party (a surprisingly populated fork of left-wing thought) which comrade Stalin correctly associated with Trotskyism. The POUM was highly productive in thought but drifted increasingly far from the moorings of political reality although rhetoric which included polemics like “Stalinist Thermidorians have established in Russia the bureaucratic regime of a poisoned dictator.” Agents of the Narodný komissariat vnutrennih del (NKVD, The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs and one of the many predecessors to the KGB), answerable only to comrade Stalin, killed dozens of POUM’s Central Committee which ended the organization’s effectiveness for a generation. In his prodigious memory, comrade Stalin filed away annoying phrases and in 1940 he had comrade Trotsky murdered in Mexico. The murder weapon was an ice-axe.
Giovanni Battista Bugatti began his career at a youthful 17 under Pius VI (1717–1799; pope 1775-1799) and diligently he served six pontiffs before being pensioned off by Pius IX (1792–1878; pope 1846-1878), his retirement induced not by the Holy See losing enthusiasm for the death penalty because one Antonio Balducci succeeded him in the office which fell into disuse only with the loss of the Papal States (756-1870; a conglomeration of territories in the central & northern Italian peninsula under the personal sovereignty of the pope), after the unification of Italy. Unlike his illustrious predecessor, history has recorded little about Signor Balducci although it’s known he performed his final execution in 1870. Signor Bugatti was by far the longest-serving of the Papal States’ many executioners and locals dubbed him Mastro Titta, a titular corruption of maestro di giustizia (master of justice) and his 69 year tenure in his unusual role can be accounted for only by either (1) he felt dispatching the condemned a calling or (2) he really enjoyed his work, because his employers were most parsimonious: he received no retainer and only a small fee per commission (although he was granted a small, official residence). His tenure was long and included 516 victims (he preferred to call them “patients”, the term adopted also by Romans who enjoyed the darkly humorous) but was only ever a part-time gig; most of his income came from his work as an umbrella painter (a part of the labour market which still exists as a tint, artisan niche). Depending on this and that, his devices included the axe, guillotine, noose or mallet while the offences punished ranged from the serious (murder, conspiracy, sedition et al) to the petty (habitual thieves and trouble-makers).
Cardinal Pietro Gasparri (1852–1934; Cardinal Secretary of State 1914-1930, left) and Benito Mussolini (1883-1945; Duce (leader) & prime-minister of Italy 1922-1943, right), signing the Lateran Treaty, Lateran Palace, Rome, 11 February 1929.
Although as early as 1786 the Grand Duchy of Tuscany became the first Italian state to abolish the death penalty (torture also banned), the sentence remained on the books in the Papal States; then as now, the poor disproportionately were victims of the sanction, similar (or worse) crimes by the bourgeoisie or nobility usually handled with less severity, “hushed-up” or just ignored. With the loss of the Papal States, the pope’s temporal domain shrunk to little more than what lay around St Peter’s Square; indeed between 1870 and the signing of Lateran Treaty (1929) after which the Italian state recognized Vatican City as a sovereign state, no pope left the Vatican, their status as self-imposed prisoners a political gesture. The Lateran treaty acknowledged the validity of the sentence (Article 8 of the 1929 Vatican City Penal Code stating anyone who attempted to assassinate the pope would be subject to the death penalty) although this provision was never used, tempted though some popes must have been. Paul VI (1897-1978; pope 1963-1978) in 1969 struck capital punishment from the Vatican's legal code and the last reference to the sanction vanished in 2001 under Saint John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005).
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