sax
/sæks/ noun, verb, proper noun
Forms saxes saxing saxed
- noun (obsolete) A knife or sword; a dagger about 50 cm (20 inches) in length.
- noun (historical) An early medieval type of machete common with the Germanic peoples.
- verb (transitive, UK dialectal) To cut or slash with a sharp instrument; incise; scarify.
- verb To play the saxophone
- noun (fashion) a shade of colour similar to sky blue
- proper noun A surname.
Synonyms
Etymology
From Middle English sax, sex, from Old English seax (“a knife, hip-knife, an instrument for cutting, a short sword, dirk, dagger”), from Proto-West Germanic *sahs, from Proto-Germanic *sahsą (“stone chip, knife”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”). Doublet of seax and zax.
Clipping of saxophone. Distantly related to etymology 1 above, because the “Sax” surname is a cognate.
Clipping of saxe blue, from the name of the region of Saxony.
Derived from German Sachs.
Webster’s 1913
Etymology [AS. seax a knife.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “sax”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details