Quote:
Originally Posted by A. G. Maisey
However somewhere along the line about 400 years ago people started to call it a "pole axe", as if it were named thus because it was an axe on a pole. Language changes over time and sometimes original understandings of words are lost.
I discovered that a poll axe was a very sophisticated medieval weapon. Nothing to do with ordinary axes as tools at all.
Then there is the "poll axe" that was used to kill animals in an abattoir.
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In order:
The term, and language in general, was static in the Appalachian mountains of the US. It was still used to mean an ax with a weighted butt when I was a kid.
I always understood the weapon to be a pole ax due to the length of the handle rather than the counter weighted cutting edge.
The poll of a normal ax was used to kill animals when bullets were considered too expensive. The animals were moved into a narrow enclosure. A person straddled this enclosure standing on the fence and swung downward onto the forehead of the animal. This always baffled me as a kid that the bitt wasn't used. I didn't understand how brain trauma worked at that age.
I gueess I always had a soft spot for axes as well.