Verb He sawed the boards in half. This blade is too dull for sawing.
Word History
Etymology
Noun (1)
Middle English sagh, sawe, going back to Old English sagu (strong feminine noun), going back to Germanic *sagō (whence also Middle Dutch sage "saw," Old High German saga, Old Icelandic sǫg) beside *segō (whence Middle Dutch sege "saw," Old High German sega), noun derivatives from a dialectal Indo-European verbal base *sek- "cut," whence also Middle Irish tescaid "(s/he) cuts, severs" (regularized from a presumed verb doˑesc, perhaps from *to-eks-sk-), Latin secō, secāre "to cut, sever, make an incision," Old Church Slavic sěkǫ, sěšti "to cut down, fell, hew," Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian sijèčēm, sjȅći "to cut, chop, hew"
Note: The base *sek- is peculiar to northwest (or European) Indo-European, being attested in Celtic, Italic, Germanic, and Slavic; *sek- is perhaps ultimately the same base as *skeh2-, *skh2- "cut open, flay"; see etymology and note at science.
Verb
Middle English sawen, derivative of sawesaw entry 2
Noun
Middle English sawe, from Old English sagu discourse; akin to Old High German & Old Norse saga tale, Old English secgan to say — more at say entry 1
First Known Use
Noun (1)
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined above