Pickaxe

The Oxford Dictionary of English states that both pick and pickaxe have the same meaning, that being a tool with a long handle at right angles to a curved iron or steel bar with a point at one end and a chisel or point at the other, used for breaking up hard ground or rock. The term pickaxe is a folk etymology alteration of Middle English via Anglo-Norman , Old French , and directly from Medieval Latin , related to Latin . Though modern picks usually feature a head with both a pointed end and an adze-like flattened blade on the other end, current spelling is influenced by axe, and pickaxe, pick-axe, or sometimes just pick cover any and all versions of the tool. ==History==

In prehistoric times a large shed deer antler from a suitable species (e.g. red deer) was often cut down to its shaft and its lowest tine and used as a one-pointed pick, and with it sometimes a large animal's shoulder blade as a crude shovel. During war in medieval times, the pickaxe was used as a weapon. ==As a weapon==

The historic pickaxe was readily adapted to a weapon for hand-to-hand combat in ancient times. Over the centuries aspects of it were incorporated in various battle axes. A pickaxe handle (sometimes called a "pickhandle" or "pick helve") is sometimes used on its own as a club for bludgeoning. In The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, pick handles were used against migrant farmers, and Georgia governor Lester Maddox famously threatened to use a similar, more slender axe handle to bar blacks from entering a whites-only restaurant in the heated days of the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. Pickaxes are commonly carried by Pioneer Sergeants in the British Army. A normal pickaxe handle is made of ash or hickory wood and is about and weighs about . British Army pickaxe handles must, by regulation, be exactly long, for use in measuring in the field. New variant designs are: • With a plastic casing on the thick end. • Made of carbon fibre They are sometimes made with a steel casing on the thick end. ==See also==