from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
noun An ax having a hammer face opposite the blade, used to slaughter cattle.
noun A medieval battle-ax consisting of a long shaft ending in an ax or a combination of an ax, hammer, and pick.
transitive verb To strike or fell with or as if with a poleax.
from The Century Dictionary.
noun Formerly, a weapon or tool consisting of an ax-head on a long handle, and often combined with a hook at the end, or a blade like a pick on the side opposite the blade of the ax; later, more loosely, a battle-ax.
noun A weapon used in the navy by boarders and also to cut away rigging, etc. It is a hatchet with a short handle at the end of which is a strong hook.
noun An ax for slaughtering cattle.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
noun Anciently, a kind of battle-ax with a long handle; later, an ax or hatchet with a short handle, and a head variously patterned; -- used by soldiers, and also by sailors in boarding a vessel.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
noun Alternative spelling of poleaxe.
verb Alternative spelling of poleaxe.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
noun an ax used to slaughter cattle; has a hammer opposite the blade
noun a battle ax used in the Middle Ages; a long handled ax and a pick
verb fell with or as if with a poleax
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
[Middle English, alteration (influenced by pole, long piece of wood) of pollax : poll, head; see poll + ax, ax; see ax.]
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Examples
You could poleax these people with a sledgehammer to the noggin, morning, noon and night, and still nothing would get through.
Whenever I see this word I want to say it in my head like "pole-ee-ax" even though I know it's not. I just came across it in a review in the New Yorker of a production of The Glass Menagerie.
knitandpurl commented on the word poleax
Whenever I see this word I want to say it in my head like "pole-ee-ax" even though I know it's not. I just came across it in a review in the New Yorker of a production of The Glass Menagerie.
April 10, 2010