Word.ws English Dictionary

hand axe

hand axe noun: a hatchet or throwing axe.

Noun

hand axe (plural hand axes)

  1. (now chiefly fantasy and roleplaying games) A hatchet or throwing axe.
  2. A prehistoric stone tool made by flaking to produce an edge, used without a handle.

Forms of hand axe

pluralhand axes
alternative formhand-axe
alternative formhandaxe
alternative formhand ax
alternative formhand-ax
alternative formhandax

Origin of hand axe

From Middle English hand-ax, handax, handex, hond axe, from Old English handæx (“hatchet”), from Proto-Germanic *handakwisī. By surface analysis, hand + axe.

Questions about hand axe

What does hand axe mean?
Hand axe means a hatchet or throwing axe.
What part of speech is hand axe?
Hand axe is a noun.
What is the plural of hand axe?
The plural of hand axe is hand axes.

Words near hand axe in the dictionary

  1. hand antiseptic
  2. hand antiseptics
  3. hand around
  4. hand away
  5. hand ax
  6. hand axe
  7. hand axes
  8. hand back
  9. hand ball
  10. hand balls
  11. hand bell

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hand axe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hand axe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hand_axe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.