Pickaxe........WHY do people call it that??

[PWC Repair]

I was just wondering cause I've only ever called it a "pick". When you look up the the words origin, there is NOTHING related to "axe" in the origins at all! Only pick or pic. AND....there's NO AXE BLADE on it. There IS however, a tool we commonly call a mattock. The mattock is also commonly called a pick ADZE, and has a blade on one side. This got me thinking......is it a regional thing? Or is it actually more likely an uneducated or misheard thing. And since that's how grandpa said it, that must be right..? Like when people say "Chester drawers". That aggrevates the $h!t out of me! Who is Chester and why the hell do you have his drawers?? I guess this was just my thought of the day...........discuss......

 

[liliysdad]

Like when people say "Chester drawers". That aggrevates the $h!t out of me! Who is Chester and why the hell do you have his drawers?? I guess this was just my thought of the day...........discuss......

Want to know what aggravates me?

 

[Dave455]

In english, a “Pickaxe” is a tool with a point on one end, and a slim axe blade (with conventional axe orientation) on the other.

The name is exactly what it is.

Don’t know the origins, but traditionally used mostly for things like road repairs or mining.

You can get a “pickaxe” with the “axe” blade orientated either way, depending on your intended use. Still a “Pickaxe”.

A “Mattock” has a broader blade, intended for cutting compacted earth, or harvesting ground crops. It’s a relatively old word - middle English (twelfth century for sure).

I have never heard a mattock called a ”pick adze”, an “adze” being a totally different tool, intended for woodworking.

 

[Beerhippie]

Why do folks call it a "Hot water heater"? If the water's hot, why heat it?

Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Why does everyone say "realator" when it's clearly spelled realtor? Gospel?

You kids get off my lawn!

 

[PWC Repair]

Want to know what aggravates me?

YES!! Is it when people say EKsetra!!!

 

[PWC Repair]

In english, a “Pickaxe” is a tool with a point on one end, and a slim axe blade (with conventional axe orientation) on the other.

The name is exactly what it is.

Don’t know the origins,

EXACTLY! English is a mix of MANY different languages and origins. Pick has origins as a tool for digging but I can't find ANYTHING, ANYWHERE tying the word axe in with it. I just figure some bonehead somewhere years ago heard "pickadze" while settling and building a log home. This young man was not familiar with the word adze but yet saw his father hewing logs and thought....."I guess he said pickaxe." Hereby known by all his friends and all his heirs as a pickaxe. Thereafter all the lemmings followed suit and cared not to ask "why".

 

[PCustoms]

ATM Machine
PIN Number

 

[RTM]

My dad's tool that looked like the WVT #7 was the pickaxe of the shed. The double pick was just a pick. The pick found on the roadside in the desert before I was born. Dad was never miner, carpenter, or farmer. Local vernacular from his birthplace of Cleveland?

Woodings-Verona Tool Works Catalogue 16 : Woodings-Verona Tool Works : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

82 p., illus., 24.4 cm, trade catalog

archive.org

I always go back to the Woodings Verona catalogs for tools of misery naming convention.

But now, let's talk to the English speaking, and look at Brades and others

William Hunt & Sons, The Brades Ltd. : Export Trade Price List : 1941 Edition : William Hunt & Sons, The Brades, Ltd. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

55 p., illus., 20.0 cm, trade catalog

archive.org

William Hunt & Sons, The Brades Ltd. : Supplementary Catalogue for Brazil, Etc., 1910 : William Hunt & Sons, The Brades, Ltd. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

45 p., illus., 25.0 cm, trade catalog

archive.org

Parkes Edge Tools : Illustrated Catalogue Export No. 28 : A. & F. Parkes & Co., Ltd. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

116 p., illus., 26.2 cm, trade catalog

archive.org

An early American Fire Equipment catalog has an index entry for Pickaxe, but doesn't call it that, tho this usage seems US correct.

American Fire Engine Co. : Illustrated Catalogue : 1893 : American Fire Engine Co. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

134 p., illus., 24.6 cm, trade catalog

archive.org

Here are many other catalogs going back to the 1850s using the word PickAxe.

Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

archive.org

Time to broaden your horizons in time and location?

 

[four.cycle]

I know, I know... you were just trying to axe a question, so I dragged out the wheelborrow and loaded it up....

You got your picks, and you got your axes, and then you got these other things that people can't make up their minds about what to call them.

 

[kbuhagiar]

ATM Machine
PIN Number

VIN number

 

[PMD1966]

I know, I know... you were just trying to axe a question, so I dragged out the wheelborrow and loaded it up....

You got your picks, and you got your axes, and then you got these other things that people can't make up their minds about what to call them.

Looks like there might be a Pulaski in that collection.

 

[FigN⋅m]

Y'know, I could care less about any of this...

 

[Hohn]

Pedants! My people!

 

[CoogarXR]

Why do people call the skinny pedal the "gas" pedal? It's the "air" pedal.

 

[FigN⋅m]

Why do people call the skinny pedal the "gas" pedal? It's the "air" pedal.

Why to we call a liquid "gas"??

 

[RTUmark]

I was just wondering cause I've only ever called it a "pick". When you look up the the words origin, there is NOTHING related to "axe" in the origins at all! Only pick or pic. AND....there's NO AXE BLADE on it. There IS however, a tool we commonly call a mattock. The mattock is also commonly called a pick ADZE, and has a blade on one side. This got me thinking......is it a regional thing? Or is it actually more likely an uneducated or misheard thing. And since that's how grandpa said it, that must be right..? Like when people say "Chester drawers". That aggrevates the $h!t out of me! Who is Chester and why the hell do you have his drawers?? I guess this was just my thought of the day...........discuss......

Chest of drawers

 

[FigN⋅m]

Chest of drawers

*whoosh*

 

[CoogarXR]

Why to we call a liquid "gas"??

Because it's gasOLINE.

Not to be confused with the other Olean, that causes gas (and **** leakage!).

I know, that joke is so 1996.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra) for all you young pups who might not get the horrible dad-joke.

 

[Beerhippie]

I know, I know... you were just trying to axe a question, so I dragged out the wheelborrow and loaded it up....

You got your picks, and you got your axes, and then you got these other things that people can't make up their minds about what to call them.

"Hazel hoe", IIRC. No Pulaski present.

 

[four.cycle]

Looks like there might be a Pulaski in that collection.

Pulaski has the flat end turned sideways.
Oddly, there isn't one in there! My late step-father was a cruiser - I can only assume he was hauling that unit at top right around with his shovel and bucket.

"Hazel hoe"

That's a term I have not heard yet.

Pulaski

 

[Sno-Pro]

DEF fluid.

 

[darkzero]

VIN number

DEF fluid.

TPS sensor. ATM machine.

Yeah I'm not used to hearing pick axe, it's a pick. Same for dikes, I've never called it dikes, why are diag cutters called that?

 

[PWC Repair]

But now, let's talk to the English speaking, and look at Brades and others




Here are many other catalogs going back to the 1850s using the word PickAxe.


Time to broaden your horizons in time and location?

Oh no,.....those are printed catalogs.......much later than the settlers of the 1600's building log homes I was referring to. By the time those catalogs were printed, everybody was just repeating what they already heard somebody else say.......the "new" english of the not quite USA. I'm really talking about the ORIGIN of the word. It appears to have only started being in use IN the USA sometime after settling......like backwoods or pixel.

 

[RTM]

much later than the settlers of the 1600's building log homes I was referring to

Sorry, never saw that reference. I was busy typing on the phone at that point, and musta ignored the new message warning.

 

[Beerhippie]

Pulaski has the flat end turned sideways.
Oddly, there isn't one in there! My late step-father was a cruiser - I can only assume he was hauling that unit at top right around with his shovel and bucket.


That's a term I have not heard yet.

Pulaski

Well, I was incorrect about the Hazel hoe. That's a single-edged adze-like digging/cutting tool used mostly in forestry and firefighting. I do know we had a name for those double-edged tools you have, but have completely forgotten it.

 

[cody1325]

Mattock is the term I use. Pick's a completely different tool.

Besides, the "axe" blade on a mattock is more for cutting through roots--not felling. That's why I'm getting a Council Pulaski on order from a forestry supply dealer. Hoe end for digging drainage ditches and other light digging work, a full-sized axe for felling--all in one tool I'm lashing on to my fencing pack.

 

[Madjik Man]

Why do folks call it a "Hot water heater"? If the water's hot, why heat it?

Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Why does everyone say "realator" when it's clearly spelled realtor? Gospel?

You kids get off my lawn!

Why are there straightaways on a turnpike?

 

[Madjik Man]

VIN number

This

 

[PWC Repair]

This

Ya, that too! LOL.

 

[Debcrow]

OK, this is too much for me to get straight.....
are we talking about a Mad Duck that Pick's at his Adze???

 

[dr_clyde]

So, axe is a noun and a verb. The act of using a axe can be referred to as axing or getting the axe. I’ve always assumed because both a common axe and a pick are swung into an object for the purpose of cutting, a pickaxe was just a natural variation of a felling axe.

The most common version of the tool we know as an axe is the traditional lumberjack woodsman axe. But a spalling axe or hammer is not that different in shape or function from a pick.

I don’t think it’s an any real stretch to go from swinging a felling or splitting axe to the almost identical motion of swinging a pick like an axe and to just naturally put the two words together and call it a pickaxe.

Technically you don’t hang up the phone anymore or roll down a window either. Words shift and move, phrases get borrowed from other languages or trades.

It’s a pick and you swing it like an axe. Pickaxe.

 

[mrb1]

All I want to know is if @four.cycle used a camera or a cellphone to capture the image

 

[toolmutt]

As a firefighter, this is what I know as pickaxe (or pick head axe). Axe on one side, pick-like shape on the other.
Contrasted with a flat head axe.

https://www.nationalfirefighter.com/resize/Shared/Images/Product/Council-Fireman-s-Pick-Axe-with-Fiberglass-Handle/60P36CFG_web.jpg?bw=1000&w=1000&bh=1000&h=1000

https://www.nationalfirefighter.com/resize/shared/images/product/6--FLATHEAD-AXE-FIBERGLASS.jpg?bw=1000&w=1000&bh=1000&h=1000

 

[four.cycle]

@Beerhippie -
RE: "Hazel Hoe"
you talkin' about a McLeod? (pronouned Muh-CLOUD)

oops... I didn't scroll down far enough....

they never handed me one of those... but I was just working trails, no fire lines.

 

[four.cycle]

All I want to know is if @four.cycle used a camera or a cellphone to capture the image

I have to assume that's a rhetorical question. Unless you're new here, you know I don't use cellular phones.

 

[four.cycle]

Technically you don’t hang up the phone anymore or roll down a window either.

I do.

 

[Debcrow]

Technically you don’t hang up the phone anymore or roll down a window either. Words shift and move, phrases get borrowed from other languages or trades.

I also hang up a phone, roll down the window in my pickup and one car.
The strange thing is that I close windows on a computer!

 

[PWC Repair]

As a firefighter, this is what I know as pickaxe (or pick head axe). Axe on one side, pick-like shape on the other.
Contrasted with a flat head axe.

https://www.nationalfirefighter.com/resize/Shared/Images/Product/Council-Fireman-s-Pick-Axe-with-Fiberglass-Handle/60P36CFG_web.jpg?bw=1000&w=1000&bh=1000&h=1000

https://www.nationalfirefighter.com/resize/shared/images/product/6--FLATHEAD-AXE-FIBERGLASS.jpg?bw=1000&w=1000&bh=1000&h=1000

Now THAT.......I can see being called a pick-axe. Short for pickhead axe. Maybe THAT's where it started going sideways and everybody calling a common pick a "pickaxe" are WRONG!??

 

[dr_clyde]

I do.

It has been very established that you're an extreme outlier from the rest of the world and that you're extremely proud of it.

I wouldn't use your data to represent the world at large, as it wouldn't be remotely accurate.

 

[Dixie_Flatline]

If we are all going to have a whinge about words, then I humbly submit the newspeak pronunciation of veteran. There is an E in there, and it is not silent. I hear it way too often pronounced vet-trans.