Chapter Automaton to Axinomancy of A by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Awkward Squad In military language means recruits not yet fitted to take their place in the regimental line.

A squad is a troop or company of soldiers under a sergeant. It is a contraction of squadron. A squadron of cavalry is the unit of a regiment. Three or four squadrons make a regiment, and a certain number of regiments constitute an army. In naval affairs a squadron is a section of a fleet.

Awl "I'll pack up my awls and be gone," i.e. all my goods. The play is on awl and all.

Axe "To hang up one's axe." To retire from business, to give over a useless project. The allusion is to the ancient battle-axe, hung up to the gods when the fight was done. All classical scholars will call to mind the allusion of Horace to a similar Roman custom. Being snubbed by Pyrrha, he says, "He will hang up his axe upon her wall," or more literally, his "drenched garments on the temple-walls of Neptune." (1 Odes, V. 14--17.) (See Ask.)

To put the axe on the helve. To solve a difficulty. To hit the right nail on the head.

To send the axe after the helve. To spend good money after bad, or under the hope of recovering bad debts.

He has an axe to grind. Some selfish motive in the background: some personal interest to answer. Franklin tells of a man who wanted to grind his axe, but had no one to turn the grindstone. Going to the yard where he saw young Franklin, he asked the boy to show him how the machine worked, and kept praising him till his axe was ground, and then laughed at him for his pains.

Axinomancy Divination by an axe; much practised by the ancient Greeks with a view of discovering crime. An agate was placed on a red-hot axe, and indicated the guilty person by its motion. (Greek, axine manteia.)