Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A saxophone.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A knife; a sword; a dagger about 20 inches in length.
  • noun A slate-cutters' hammer. It has a point at the back of the head, for making nail-holes in slates. Also called slate-ax.
  • noun A dialectal (Scotch) form of six.
  • noun An abbreviation of Saxon and Saxony.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A kind of chopping instrument for trimming the edges of roofing slates.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Short form of saxophone.
  • noun A knife; a sword; a dagger about 20 inches in length.
  • noun A slate-cutter's hammer; slate-ax.
  • verb transitive To cut or slash with a sharp instrument; incise; scarify.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a Belgian maker of musical instruments who invented the saxophone (1814-1894)
  • noun a single-reed woodwind with a conical bore

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From saxophone.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English, from Old English seax ("a knife, hip-knife, an instrument for cutting, a short sword, dirk, dagger"), from Proto-Germanic *sahsan (“rock, knife”), from Proto-Indo-European *sÁk-, *sek-, *sēik- (“to cut”). Cognate with North Frisian sax ("knife, sword"), Middle Dutch sas ("knife"), Middle Low German sax ("knife"), Middle High German sahs ("a knife"), Danish and Swedish sax ("a pair of scissors"), Icelandic sax ("a short heavy sword"), Latin secō ("cut"). See also Saxon, saw.

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Examples

  • More on Oct 28, 2008 how can i get back mona sax from the jail … … … …. plz hellp me …. abhishek on Nov 17, 2008

    Mila Kunis Talks Max Payne Movie « FirstShowing.net 2008

  • The sax is a slow river, all misted over, in the decadent drift of summer nights— no roads leading anywhere, no want to find one, no dawn to come scratching at the window to be let in.

    Exile on Main St. Sam Rasnake 2011

  • So I put overdubbed sax on there, too, and got a call from a country station here in town that said ' If you take that sax off and put a steel there, we ' ll play it.

    Billy Sherrill, Icon and Iconoclast Barry Mazor 2010

  •  In that particular photo I can tell the sax is a woman, though probably no one else can.

    [nearly here] 2009

  • In that particular photo I can tell the sax is a woman, though probably no one else can.

    [nearly here] 2009

  • For example, the word sax in Anglo - Saxon means a sharp blade, "and rohmer in Anglo - Saxon stands for" a wanderer. "

    In The Queens' Parlour Queen, Ellery 1864

  • In some circles, it is said that playing the sax is the only thing Clinton can do without his wife or a friendly Cabinet member pulling his strings, but this is far from relevant to the current point.

    In a Free Land Issue #1 by Rageboy Publications 1993

  • The pop feeling continues to carry Side A with 'Invisible Sun', a sociological discourse with a touch of early Traffic, and 'Hungry for You', an interesting bit of bilingual horseplay set against Sting's overdubbed sax and Copeland's funky percussion.

    Ghost In The Machine 1981

  • His sax was a pillar of the E Street sound; Clemons also was the band's spiritual center.

    www.startribune.com 2012

  • Then Irabagon starts steering a different route on sax, which is complemented later when Evans lays out a furious trumpet display.

    Audiophile Audition Headlines 2010

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