axe [OE] Since Anglo-Saxon times an axe has been a tool or weapon, but since the 1950s it has also been a musical instrument. Jazz fans started referring to saxophones as axes, but now an axe is generally an electric guitar. The axe, meaning a measure intended to reduce costs, especially by making people redundant, goes back to at least 1922. A person who has an axe to grind has a private reason for doing something. The phrase is thought to come from an 18th-century cautionary tale in which a passing stranger takes advantage of a bystander and, by flattering him, tricks him into turning a grindstone to sharpen his axe.