ax

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A tool with a bladed, usually heavy head mounted crosswise on a handle, used for felling trees or chopping wood.
2. n. Any of various bladed, hand-held implements used as a cutting tool or weapon.
3. n. Informal A sudden termination of employment: My colleague got the ax yesterday.
4. n. Slang A musical instrument, especially a guitar.
5. v. To chop or fell with or as if with an ax: axed down the saplings; axed out a foothold in the ice.
6. v. Informal To remove ruthlessly or suddenly: a social program that was axed to effectuate budget cuts.
7. idiom. ax to grind A selfish or ulterior aim: He claimed to be disinterested, but I knew he had an ax to grind.
8. v. Nonstandard Variant of ask.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. An instrument used for hewing timber and chopping wood, and also as a weapon of offense. The modern ax consists of a head of iron, with an arching edge of steel, and a helve or handle. The edge is in the plane of the sweep of the tool, thus differing from the adz, in which the edge is at right angles to the plane of the sweep. As a weapon, the ax was in very common use from the earliest times until the general adoption of firearms. It was used by the Egyptians. By the Greeks it was looked upon as a weapon of their own ancestors and of the Asiatic nations, and so figured in works of Greek art. The northern nations who overthrew the Roman empire used many varieties of this weapon, and its use prevailed throughout the middle ages in Europe. A light ax was common among the Arabs and Moors. Axes of various kinds of stone, or entirely of copper or bronze, are found among prehistoric and ancient remains, and in use by barbarous races. See celt.
2. To shape or trim with an ax.
3. n. An axle; an axis.
4. Obsolete or dialectal forms of ask.

Wiktionary

1. n. alternative spelling of axe.
2. v. alternative spelling of axe.
3. v. Alternative form of ask.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. 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.
2. v. To ask; to inquire or inquire of.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. terminate.
2. v. chop or split with an ax
3. n. an edge tool with a heavy bladed head mounted across a handle