(especially BrE) (AmE usually ax)
1 a tool with a wooden handle and a heavy metal blade, used for chopping wood, cutting down trees, etc.
seealsoBATTLEAXE, ICEAXE, PICKAXE
2 (the axe) [sing.] (informal) if sb gets the axe, they lose their job; if an institution or a project gets the axe, it is closed or stopped, usually because of a lack of money:
Up to 300 workers are facing the axe at a struggling Merseyside firm. * Patients are delighted their local hospital has been saved from the axe. * Protesters, anxious over the spending cuts, urged councillors to think again before wielding the axe.
IDIOMS
have an axe to grind to have private reasons for being involved in sth or for arguing for a particular cause:
She had no axe to grind and was only acting out of concern for their safety. * These criticisms are commonly voiced by those who have some political axe to grind.
verb (BrE) (AmE ax) [VN] [oftenpassive]
1 to get rid of a service, system, etc. or to reduce the money spent on it by a large amount:
Other less profitable services are to be axed later this year.
2 to remove sb from their job:
Jones has been axed from the team.
3 to kill sb with an axe
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
This entry for axe is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is axe a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, axe is tagged as noun.
Does axe appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — axe appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
