Usage notes

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2000 identifies this usage of "ax" as "an especially salient feature of African American Vernacular English." However, it does not limit the usage to African Americans, stating that "it used to be common in the speech of white Americans as well, especially in New England". Outside of the Americas it is indicated to occur "in some dialects of British English."

The American Heritge Dictionary links the origin of this usage to the origin of ax as a word itself, stating it is a "very old word in English, having been used in England for over 1,000 years." Several words are used to support this point:

• scian and csian are both found in Old English, an example of Metathesis or reversal of sounds
• asken and axen were frequently used interchangably in Middle English, such as in "I wol aske, if it hir will be/To be my wyf" and "Men axed hym, what sholde bifalle," Both present in Chaucer's The Cantenbury Tales.

Finally, "x" was standardized as the sound representing ks or cs. At the time, "'cs' or 'x' had no stigma associated with them." However, "ax" later became "stigmatized as substandard" (see ain't) with ask becoming the preferred spelling.