Meaning & use
adz
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Meaning
nouncountabletechnical
A cutting tool with a curved blade fixed across the end of a handle, swung toward the user to carve or smooth wood.
Grammar: Plural adzes; a worker uses an adz, never a pair of adzes as one tool.
Patterns
- shape something with an adz
The shipwright smoothed the beam with an adz.
He swung the adz in short, even strokes.
An old adz hung on the barn wall.
Word forms
| plural | adzes |
|---|
Common combinations
- swing an adz
- She swung the adz carefully along the log.
- shape with an adz
- The canoe was shaped with an adz.
- sharpen an adz
- He sharpened the adz before starting work.
- hand-forged adz
- A hand-forged adz sat on the workbench.
- adz and axe
- They carried an adz and an axe into the forest.
Synonyms and how they differ
- axe
- An axe has its blade in line with the handle for chopping, while an adz has its blade set across for smoothing.
- hatchet
- A hatchet is a small chopping axe, and is not used to shave wood to a flat surface like an adz.
- plane
- A plane also smooths wood but pushes a fixed blade along the surface rather than swinging it.
Word family
Commonly confused: adz or ads?
adz vs ads
Ads is the short form of advertisements and sounds similar to adz in fast speech, but the tool is the adz.
Practice
Which tool has a blade set across the handle for smoothing a wooden beam?
Choose one answer.
An adz has a curved blade across the handle. A chisel is struck, not swung, and a crowbar and sledgehammer do not shape wood.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “adz”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.