Word.ws English Dictionary

sax

/sæks/

sax noun: a knife or sword; a dagger about 50 cm (20 inches) in length. Also the alternative spelling of zax.

Noun (1)

sax (plural saxes)

  1. (obsolete) A knife or sword; a dagger about 50 cm (20 inches) in length.
  2. (historical) An early medieval type of machete common with the Germanic peoples.

Verb (1)

sax (third-person singular simple present saxes, present participle saxing, simple past and past participle saxed)

  1. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To cut or slash with a sharp instrument; incise; scarify.

Verb (2)

sax (third-person singular simple present saxes, present participle saxing, simple past and past participle saxed)

  1. To play the saxophone

Noun (2)

sax (plural saxes)

  1. a shade of colour similar to sky blue

Proper noun (1) capitalized: SAX

SAX

  1. (Internet, abbreviation, acronym) Acronym of Simple API for XML.

Proper noun (2) capitalized: Sax

Sax (plural Saxes)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

sax is also the alternative spelling of zax.

sax is also the clipping of saxophone.

Forms of sax

Noun
pluralsaxes
Verb
third-person singular presentsaxes
present participlesaxing
past participlesaxed
pastsaxed
Proper noun
pluralSaxes

Plural of sax: saxes

Origin of sax

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.

Words formed from sax

Phrases with sax

Words that rhyme with sax

32 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sax

What does sax mean?
Sax means a knife or sword; a dagger about 50 cm (20 inches) in length.
What part of speech is sax?
Sax can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce sax?
Sax is pronounced /sæks/.
What is the plural of sax?
The plural of sax is saxes.

Words near sax in the dictionary

  1. Sawyer County
  2. sawyers
  3. Sawyers Gully
  4. sawzall
  5. sawzalls
  6. sax
  7. sax tuba
  8. sax tubas
  9. Sax.
  10. Saxa Vord
  11. saxafras

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sax (page history and authors); SAX (page history and authors); Sax (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-sax.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-sax.wav.

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