Seax (also sax, sæx, sex, latinized sachsum) is an Old English word for "knife". In modern archaeology, the term seax is used specifically for a type of sword or dagger typical of the Germanic peoples - especially the Saxons, whose tribal name derives from the weapon - during the Migration period and the Early Middle Ages.
In heraldry, the seax is a charge consisting of a curved sword with a notched blade, appearing, for example, in the coats of arms of Essex and the former Middlesex.
Old English seax, sax and Old Frisian sax are identical with Old Saxon and Old High German saks, all from a Common Germanic *sahsom from a root *sah, *sag- "to cut" (also in saw, from a PIE root *sek-). The term scramaseax, scramsax lit. "wounding-knife" is sometimes used for disambiguation, even though it is not attested in Old English, but taken from an occurrence of scramasaxi in Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks.
The name of the roofer's tool, the zax, is a development from this word.
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Other articles related to "seax":
... are defined for seaxes between roughly 450 and 800 AD, in chronological order Narrow long seax Short seax Narrow seax – Often have braided bands or snakes engraved in ... Light broad seax – Similar to narrow seax, but frequently lack metal hilt parts, and have simpler decorations on the blade, such as parallel lines ... Heavy broad seax – Have simple decorations on the blade if any, and long single-part organic hilts (>20 cm) ...
... See also Seax Two distinct classes of knives were in use by Vikings ... The other type was the seax ... associated with Vikings is the so-called broken-back style seax ...
... to practice it, and formed a new tradition, known as Seax-Wica ... Seax used the structure of traditional Gardnerian covens, but used the iconography of Anglo-Saxon paganism, so the God and the Goddess were represented not as the traditional Horned God and Mother Goddess, but ... Seax was virtually unique amongst Wicca at the time as it did not work on an initiatory basis of covens Buckland deliberately published all its rites ...
... Seax-Wica is a tradition, or denomination, of the neopagan religion of Wicca which is largely inspired by the iconography of the historical Anglo-Saxon paganism, though, unlike Theodism, it is not a ... with the intent for it to be a definitive guide to Seax-Wica, and was published in 1974 by Samuel Weiser, though subsequently republished in 2005 as Buckland's Book of Saxon Witchcraft ...
... Introduced in 2001, by Seax Gesith Ariel Phoenice, Witan of the Mimir's Well Seax Coven Perú ...