Sax

//sæks// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Alternative spelling of zax. alt-of, alternative
  2. 2
    Clipping of saxophone. abbreviation, alt-of, clipping
  3. 3
    a shade of colour similar to sky blue
  4. 4
    a single-reed woodwind with a conical bore wordnet
  5. 5
    A knife or sword; a dagger about 50 cm (20 inches) in length. obsolete
Verb
  1. 1
    To cut or slash with a sharp instrument; incise; scarify. British, dialectal, transitive
  2. 2
    To play the saxophone
Proper Noun
  1. 1
    Acronym of Simple API for XML. Internet, abbreviation, acronym, alt-of
  2. 2
    A surname.

Synonyms

All synonyms
adolphe saxbassoonclarinetedge toolenglish hornfife

Example

More examples

"She was a tiny girl, but she really held her own on the baritone sax. Nonetheless, I couldn't help but imagine the thing wrapping itself around her and devouring her like a boa constrictor."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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.

Etymology 2

Clipping of saxophone. Distantly related to etymology 1 above, because the “Sax” surname is a cognate.

Etymology 3

Clipping of saxe blue, from the name of the region of Saxony.

Etymology 4

From the German surname, spelling variant of Sachs.

Related phrases

Mississippi saxalto saxbari saxbaritone saxbass saxcontrabass saxsax tubasopranino saxsopranissimo saxsoprano saxsoprillo saxsubcontrabass sax

More for "sax"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.