Axe Question

[A. G. Maisey]

Yes, that is correct, an old term for the butt --- ie, the back of the axe head --- was "poll". The cutting edge is the "bit".

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.

My understanding of "poll axe" was the same as the smiths, & perhaps general understanding of the term in my own community, that is, that it was an axe that used a round eye, clearly the 400 year old meaning had been totally forgotten, understandable I guess. It was not until I did a bit of digging that 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.

The eye in the hatchet under discussion appears to me to be a teardrop eye, I've brought the contrast up a bit & it is now quite easy to see.

[Interested Party]

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.

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.

[A. G. Maisey]

It seems to be clear that the term "poll axe" or "pole axe"can mean different things to different people.

In some places it seems to mean an axe with a heavy butt, in other places it means an axe that has a head with a round eye, but the term seems to have originated some time in the 14th-15th centuries as the name of weapon with longish shaft, the head of which was a combination of a pike, a hammer, & an axe.

In any case, however we wish to understand the term, I rather doubt that it can be applied to the hatchet that began this thread.

[A. G. Maisey]

Maybe we could call this a poll axe?

It is a ball-pein hammer head that had a chipped face & has been forged into a carpenters hatchet.

I've never put a handle on it, & never used it, but it is fit for purpose.

[CutlassCollector]

Terminology is always interesting!

Essentially a Poll Axe is a meaningless term as all axes have them.

The Poll of an axe, as A. G. Maisey has already said, is the opposite end of the head to the blade also called the Butt. The word poll comes from an old word for head, still used in the context of voting/elections, polling - counting heads, poll tax etc. Yes, head and butt seem opposite - no idea why.

If Poll is linked with square, round, hammer, spike etc which describes the shape then, it is valid as a means of classifying a type.

I accept that terminology changes with time and locality and I have no problem with that but I think we should respect the old terminology when talking about the items of that period.

Neumann in 'Swords and Blades of the American Revolution' classifies many axes from 1600 to 1800 as round, square, hammer, or spiked polls. Kaufmann's 'American Axes' traces the development of axes from much earlier and also uses the term. This axe would be classed as a square poll axe.

[A. G. Maisey]

I cannot disagree with that, but since the way in which a word is understood changes from place to place & time to time, and in some places from person to person, if we are to classify anything with reasonable accuracy, then we must place it into context.

So, if the hatchet that started this thread is a square poll axe, then I feel that we must place that terminology into a frame of when & where it would have been named as a square poll axe. Here in Australia I believe most people would simply call it an old tomahawk, or tommyhawk, or hawk, or hatchet.

When the way in which we use & understand words arises as a subject for discussion, I cannot help but recall some of my early lessons in the English language, and the word "occupy". From the 1500's through to the early 1800's "occupy" could be understood in a very different way to our current understanding. Apparently, in Shakespeare's England, use of the word in public could get you time in the stocks.