Tools with sharp-toothed blades used for cutting wood, metal, or other materials. Can also be the past tense of 'see' or refer to traditional sayings and proverbs.
From Old English saga meaning 'a cutting tool,' related to Old Norse sög and German Säge. The tool sense developed from Proto-Germanic *sagō. The 'sayings' meaning comes from Old English sagu meaning 'speech, discourse,' showing how one word can follow two completely different etymological paths.
The phrase 'old saw' meaning a tired saying creates delightful confusion - it has nothing to do with cutting tools but comes from the Old English word for speech. This linguistic accident means we can have an old saw about saws, where one 'saw' refers to wisdom and the other to woodworking, making English wonderfully ambiguous.
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