1. Turned or twisted toward one side; not in a straight or true direction, or position; out of the right course; distorted; obliquely; asquint; with
oblique vision; as, to glance awry. "Your crown's awry." Shak.
Blows them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry.
Into the devious air.
Milton.
2. Aside from the line of truth, or right reason; unreasonable or unreasonably; perverse or perversely.
Or by her charms
Draws him awry, enslaved.
Milton.
Nothing more awry from the law of God and nature than that a woman should give laws to men.
Milton.
Awsome
(Aw"some) a. Same as Awesome.
Ax
(Ax, Axe), n. [OE. ax, axe, AS. eax, æx, acas; akin to D. akse, OS. accus, OHG. acchus, G.
axt, Icel. öx, öxi, Sw. yxe, Dan. ökse, Goth. aqizi, Gr. , L. ascia; not akin to E. acute.] A tool or
instrument of steel, or of iron with a steel edge or blade, for felling trees, chopping and splitting wood,
hewing timber, etc. It is wielded by a wooden helve or handle, so fixed in a socket or eye as to be in the
same plane with the blade. The broadax, or carpenter's ax, is an ax for hewing timber, made heavier
than the chopping ax, and with a broader and thinner blade and a shorter handle.
The ancient battle-ax had sometimes a double edge.
The word is used adjectively or in combination; as, axhead or ax head; ax helve; ax handle; ax shaft;
ax-shaped; axlike.
This word was originally spelt with e, axe; and so also was nearly every corresponding word of one
syllable: as, flaxe, taxe, waxe, sixe, mixe, pixe, oxe, fluxe, etc. This superfluous e is not dropped; so
that, in more than a hundred words ending in x, no one thinks of retaining the e except in axe. Analogy
requires its exclusion here.
"The spelling ax is better on every ground, of etymology, phonology, and analogy, than axe, which has
of late become prevalent." New English Dict.
Ax
(Ax) v. t. & i. [OE. axien and asken. See Ask.] To ask; to inquire or inquire of.
This word is from Saxon, and is as old as the English language. Formerly it was in good use, but now
is regarded as a vulgarism. It is still dialectic in England, and is sometimes heard among the uneducated
in the United States. "And Pilate axide him, Art thou king of Jewis?" "Or if he axea fish." Wyclif. 'bdThe
king axed after your Grace's welfare." Pegge.
Axal
(Ax"al) a. [See Axial.] [R.]
Axe
(Axe Axe"man) etc. See Ax, Axman.
Axial
(Ax"i*al) a.
1. Of or pertaining to an axis; of the nature of, or resembling, an axis; around an axis.
To take on an axial, and not an equatorial, direction.
Nichol.
2. (Anat.) Belonging to the axis of the body; as, the axial skeleton; or to the axis of any appendage or
organ; as, the axial bones.
Axial line (Magnetism),
the line taken by the magnetic force in passing from one pole of a horseshoe
magnet to the other. Faraday.
Axially
(Ax"i*al*ly) adv. In relation to, or in a line with, an axis; in the axial (magnetic) line.