fax
Americannoun
-
faxes
plural
adjective
verb (used with object)
-
faxes,
present (3rd person singular)
-
faxed,
past participle, past
-
faxing
present participle
noun
-
Also: fax machine. short for facsimile machine
-
short for facsimile transmission
-
a message or document sent by fax
verb
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
faxsimple
-
faxessimple
-
have faxedperfect
-
has faxedperfect
-
am faxingprogressive
-
are faxingprogressive
-
is faxingprogressive
-
have been faxingperfect progressive
-
has been faxingperfect progressive
Past
-
faxedsimple
-
had faxedperfect
-
was faxingprogressive
-
were faxingprogressive
-
had been faxingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of fax
By shortening and respelling
Explanation
A fax is a machine that sends a scanned paper copy using a telephone line, and it's also what you call the document itself. When you send someone a fax, their fax machine prints it out for them. You might need to send a fax when you're signing an important document long distance: for example, a lease or loan agreement might need to be signed, scanned, and sent as a fax. The word is a verb, too: "I'll fax that to you right away." It's short for facsimile, "exact copy," from the Latin root fac simile, "make similar." The growth of the Internet means that faxes aren't used as often as they once were.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Hamawy had helped Abdel-Rahman translate a fax from Egypt and had been to the cleric’s apartment.
From Slate ● Jul. 14, 2026
Surrounded by Filofaxes, fax machines and VHS recorders, he shares his theory of why the first series was such a hit.
From BBC ● May 13, 2026
“We fax over the power of attorney, the medical documents, and start acting immediately. These are the gaps no one plans for.”
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 27, 2026
Email’s invention led to the collapse of the interoffice memo and the fax machine, freeing workers from the need to communicate in real time.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 24, 2026
By the time we met in the middle, I was wearing a smile as wide as the gorge, and I said, “Did you fax it to him?”
From "Silent To The Bone" by E.L. Konigsburg
Back in December 2018, Conservative health secretary Matt Hancock banned the NHS from buying new faxes and ordered a complete phase-out by April 2020.
From BBC ● Jan. 8, 2026
Cyrus, who doesn’t have a fax machine handy, said she has to pick up faxes at her lawyer’s office.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 25, 2024
Meanwhile, older attorneys are finding their skills in high demand, as they teach younger attorneys to use faxes and file with paper, said Karla Whitaker, interim executive director of the Kansas Bar Association.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 25, 2023
They are continuing their work, communicating with the senator through the phone, memos and faxes.
From New York Times ● May 28, 2023
For a while they’d sent a flurry of faxes to each other, then several days passed without Doug hearing from her.
From "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer
It made a fortune in international long-distance calls in the 1980s as businesses faxed documents, bypassing FedEx.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 11, 2026
The New York Times reported in May that it had received a set of emails, faxed from a toll-free number, in choppy Luganda, a Bantu language widely spoken in Uganda.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2024
Local authorities which the Global Times said were conducting the audits and probes in Henan, Hubei, Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces did not immediately respond to faxed requests from Reuters seeking comment.
From Reuters ● Oct. 23, 2023
The ministry did not respond to a faxed request for comment.
From Seattle Times ● Oct. 22, 2023
Exhausted, I wandered the halls of the courthouse while we waited for one more piece of paper to be faxed and approved to clear the way for the release of Mr. Caston and Mr. Carter.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
Footballers' agents used faxing to secure the transfer of players, although the method has been retired by the Premier League.
From BBC ● Nov. 1, 2022
Naturally, each site has different hoops you have to jump through, such as sending an email, filling out a form, mailing or faxing a letter, or confirming your identity.
From Washington Post ● Jun. 24, 2022
Borat is faxing back and forth with his premier.
From The Guardian ● Oct. 24, 2020
Sandler wrote the movie in 1993 with his former college roommate Tim Herlihy, faxing 10 pages at a time back and forth between New York and Los Angeles.
From New York Times ● Nov. 27, 2019
Every year we spend hundreds of dollars on phone calls and letters, writing, faxing, cajoling, and bribing, trying to get out of the pilgrimage to Mommy’s tiny house in Ewing.
From "The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother" by James McBride
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
