adese

Adze descends from Old English adese or adesa, a word of uncertain origin that has no clear cognates in other Germanic languages. This linguistic isolation is unusual: most Old English tool names have relatives in German, Dutch, or Old Norse. The adze may be among the oldest layer of English vocabulary, predating the major borrowings and trade routes that gave English most of its tool terminology. It names something so fundamental that it needed its own word — a word that stood alone because the tool itself preceded all the comparisons one might make.