saxon
/ˈsæksən/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.58 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
2
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A member of an ancient West Germanic tribe that lived at the eastern North Sea coast and south of it.
noun
A native or inhabitant of Saxony, Germany.
noun
An English/British person.
name
Upper Saxon, a dialect of modern High German spoken in Saxony.
name
A surname.
Example Sentences
- "Kenett states that the military works still known by the name of Tadmarten Camp and Hook-Norton Barrow were cast up at this time ; the former, large and round, is judged to be a fortification of the Danes, and the latter, being smaller and rather a quinquangle than a square, of the Saxons."
- "[...] in West Germany Saxony and Saxons became synonymous with Ulbricht's Communist regime, [...]"
- "The film taught that socialist competition, through encouraging the collaboration of both men and women and Saxons and Berliners, could overcome the natural antagonism between male industrial mass production and female fashion."
- "Dealing with people there was different from the way I dealt with Saxons, Berliners and others back in Leipzig."
- "Not everyone from the former GDR states are Saxons – and they do not all speak Saxon, […]"
- "Then came the call to arms, love, the heather was aflame / Down from the silent mountains, the Saxon strangers came."
Etymology
Partially from Middle English Saxe, Sax; from Old English *Seaxa (attested in plural Seaxan), and Saxoun, from Old French *Saxoun, Saxon (“Saxon”), from Late Latin Saxōnem, accusative of Saxō (“a Saxon”), both from Proto-West Germanic *sahs, from Proto-Germanic *sahsą (“rock, knife”), from Proto-Indo-European *sek- (“to cut”). Doublet of Sais. Cognates Cognate with Middle Low German sasse (“someone speaking Saxon, i.e. (Middle) Low German”), Old English Seaxa (“a Saxon”), Old High German Sahso (“a Saxon”), Icelandic Saxi (“a Saxon”), Estonian saks (“lord; German”), Finnish Saksa (“Germany”). Also cognate to Old English seax (“a knife, hip-knife, an instrument for cutting, a short sword, dirk, dagger”); more at sax.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
- American usage
- Dated
- Uncountable