also adz, "cutting tool resembling an axe, but with a curved blade at a right-angle to the handle, used for dressing timber," 18c. spelling modification of ads, addes, from Middle English adese, adse, from Old English adesa "adze, hatchet," which is of unknown origin. Adze "has been monosyllabic only since the seventeenth century. The word has no cognates, though it resembles the names of the adz and the hammer in many languages" [Liberman, 2008]. Perhaps somehow related to Old French aisse, Latin ascia "axe" (see axe).
