poleax
Americannoun
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a medieval shafted weapon with blade combining ax, hammer, and apical spike, used for fighting on foot.
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an ax, usually with a hammer opposite the cutting edge, used in stunning and slaughtering animals.
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an ax with both a blade and a hook, formerly used in naval warfare to assist sailors in boarding vessels.
verb (used with object)
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of poleax
First recorded in 1300–50; Middle English pollax “battle-ax,” literally, “head-ax” ( see poll 1, ax); akin to Middle Low German polexe
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:
The normally thorough Ms. Lawrence then compounded her error by neglecting to poleax, or at the very least smack, the insanely annoying character played by Stanley Tucci throughout “The Hunger Games.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 24, 2015
His congressional critics, buttressed by 47 newly elected Republicans, stand ready to poleax any overambitious new measures.
From Time Magazine Archive
Eight years ago, in Tommy Gallagher's Crusade, James T. Farrell beat his readers over the head with a poleax to make much the same point.
From Time Magazine Archive
Since there is no other reference to an incident involving Poles, critics generally agree that Shakespeare was referring to a heavy or "leaded poleax" that the king smote on the ice.
From Time Magazine Archive
Who could poleax a stickball like a twelfth-grader and catch a football like Hands Down.
From "Maniac Magee" by Jerry Spinelli
Dog-headed men prowled in packs, their poleaxes gleaming in the light of campfires.
From "Blood of Olympus" by Rick Riordan
Men with lanterns and poleaxes, as if going to the shambles to kill oxen, hurried along the streets.
From The White Plumes of Navarre A Romance of the Wars of Religion by Crockett, S. R. (Samuel Rutherford)
They were followed by twelve henchmen, walking four abreast, arrayed in scarlet tunics, with the royal cypher H.R. worked in gold on the breast, and carrying gilt poleaxes over their shoulders.
From Windsor Castle by Ainsworth, William Harrison
We were six hundred, and marched with those damned poleaxes of Auberon's—the only weapons we've got.
From The Napoleon of Notting Hill by Robertson, W. Graham (Walford Graham)
Fight in the lists with poleaxes between Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and Sir Pandolf Malatesta, at Verona, temp.
From A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII by Gardiner, Samuel Rawson
In these moments, the guitarist is poleaxed like the rest of us.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 6, 2026
"Overall, the Nikkei would be poleaxed, and global equity markets would also weaken."
From Reuters ● Jan. 18, 2023
Williams says, until you’ve voiced an audiobook, you can’t understand “how utterly poleaxed you feel by the end of the day. Your throat hurts. Your back hurts. Your legs hurt. Your brain hurts.”
From The Guardian ● Nov. 16, 2019
“When I was 5 I saw ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ and my mother said it poleaxed me,” Mr. Williams told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1998.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 19, 2019
They never had to make this fabrication a matter of public record, however: their letter to Bloom accusing him of this deed did the trick—he finally dropped out of the fight as if poleaxed.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
She brings the house down in Fanny’s poleaxing first-act numbers, “I’m the Greatest Star,” “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” from the golden age score by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 4, 2024
However, the Hotline gives no credit in the power ratings for poleaxing FCS opponents.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 20, 2021
His poleaxing of cap and trade leaves firms in Ontario with C$2.8bn of pollution permits that may now be worthless.
From Economist ● Jun. 28, 2018
The end result — a 59-0 Crimson Tide poleaxing — left Commodores Coach Derek Mason calling some of his players “soft.”
From Washington Post ● Sep. 28, 2017
Another of her poleaxing final sentences: “The truth was that I loved being alive so much that not having died was more important to me by far than losing the child: more important than anything.”
From Slate ● Jan. 8, 2016
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.
