Axe In Wycliffe's Bible

To begin with, the use of axe in Wycliffe’s Bible is illustrated by the first column of the table. At first look, we realized that the spelling form of the word in this case is ax instead of axe. As we said before, the spelling during the Middle Ages suffered significant changes. In order to determine the meaning of ax in sentence 1, we have looked at key words that accompany ax in the sentence. For instance, the words hamer(hammer) and bildyng(building) give us the hint to state that in this case the word ax means ‘tool or instrument’, the earliest meaning of the word. In contrast, the meaning of ax in sentence 2 differs from the one in sentence 1, in this case the word means ‘weapon’, meaning acquired at the end of 1200. Once again, the key
words that accompany ax have helped us to determine the meaning of it. For instance, the word swerd, that is the Middle English form of sword, helped us to determine the meaning. Besides, the use of axe in sentence 3 is completely unrelated to the core meaning that we are focused on. Indeed, axe in sentence 3 means ‘to ask’. However, it is important to notice that the spelling was changed, and it might be due to the homographic form of ask and axe during Middle English.
Furthermore, the analysis of Shakespeare’s corpus let us establish that the spelling of the word in Shakespeare is the same as the contemporary one.
Actually, the form ax does not appear in any of his works. Regarding the meaning, the word axe in sentence 4 refers to the weapon used to decapitate criminals, meaning that came into English in 1450. Similarly, axe in sentence 6 means ‘weapon’, meaning that came into English in 1200. Finally, the meaning of axe in sentence 5 is ‘tool or instrument for hewing wood’. On the other hand, axe appears again with a different spelling in Chaucer. The analysis of Chaucer’s corpus shows a similar use of the word as in Wycliffe’s Bible. For instance, the context of ax in sentence 7 indicates that it means ‘tool or instrument for hewing wood’. However, in sentence 8 the context suggests that the meaning is related to weaponry. Moreover, the last example shows again the use of the spelling form axe to refer to the verb to ask. In both Chaucer and Wycliffe, the spelling axe appears with another meaning and as another part of the speech. This fact created confusion at the beginning of the analysis, since it looked like the word was actually being used as a verb earlier than what the dictionary established. Nevertheless, the translations of both works show how it actually refers to another word with a different etymology. Eventually, it is suggested that the fact that Chaucer and Wycliffe were earlier in time than Shakespeare could be the reason why they used different
spellings.
To illustrate the word’s use and the meaning in contemporary English, we have looked at the Hansard Corpus and at the Corpus of Global Web-Based English. The combination of both corpuses allows us to compare the use of the word in different countries. Consequently, we have based the choice of utterance on British English and America English examples.