Entry · catalog no. 3302
axe
/ æks /AKS
noun · national · 1950s
✓ Verified
1.
A musician's own instrument. First said of the saxophone in Black jazz circles, later carried to the trumpet, the guitar, and any instrument a player picks up.
“He showed up to the session, unpacked his axe, and blew everybody away.”
Origin & Attribution
Black jazz slang from the mid-1950s, first attached to the saxophone before it spread to other instruments. Widely assumed to be a rock-guitar coinage of the 1960s — but the guitarists borrowed it from jazz saxophonists who were already calling their horns axes a decade earlier.
1950s
Jazz musicians call the saxophone an 'axe'
1960s
Sense widens to the guitar
now
Standard musician's word for any instrument
Region of origin
West
Midwest
N.East
South
Nationwide
national · 1950s
Spoken by
Black jazz musicians
$AXEThe Record · cultural traction
▲ Steady71 yrs
ahead of the mainstream
55/100
peak cultural energy
Introduced to English by the culture — logged here before the mainstream caught on.
Cultural usage — the recordMainstream search interest
First used
1955
in the culture
Cultural energy indexed from documented usage, search interest, and citation frequency. The recorded date is the archive’s permanent point of record.
Hear it spoken
By region — how it actually sounds
@auntiereg
Atlanta, GA
@deltasoul
Memphis, TN
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Citations & Sources
■
+ Cite a sourceGreen's Dictionary of Slang — dates the instrument (saxophone) sense to 1955
1955
See also