Axe

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." 

Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin with Gibson EDS-1275 Doubleneck, Earl’s Court, London, May 1975.

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.

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.

Lindsay Lohan at the AXE Lounge, Southampton, New York, June 2009.