c900 tr. Bede Eccl. Hist. ii. xvi He..hæfde blæc feax.

OE Beowulf 2967 Swat ædrum sprong forð under fexe.

c1000 Sax. Leechd. I. 110 Wiþ þæt ðæt mannes fex fealle.

c1275 (?a1200) Laȝamon Brut (Calig.) (1978) l. 12398 [Heo] luken heom bi uaxe [c1300 Otho þan heere] and laiden heom to grunde.

a1400 (a1325) Cursor Mundi (Vesp.) l. 7244 Thoru his fax his force was tint.

c1440 Bone Flor. 1545 Then they lowsyd hur feyre faxe, That was yelowe as the waxe.

c1480 (a1400) St. Martha 7 in W. M. Metcalfe Legends Saints Sc. Dial. (1896) I. 285 Scho was far of fax and face.

a1522 G. Douglas tr. Virgil Æneid (1957) ii. v. 51 Hys fax and berd was fadyt quhar he stude.

1548 Hall's Vnion: Henry VIII f. x^v Y^e fassis of their head set ful of new deuised facions.

1575 J. Rolland Treat. Court Venus i. f. 17^v With countinance and facts virginall.

1606 P. Holland in tr. Suetonius Hist. Twelve Caesars Annot. 30* Whose lokes and faix were so slicke and glib with sweet oyles, that they shone againe.

1610 P. Holland tr. W. Camden Brit. i. 723 Fax in the old English tongue signifieth..the haire of the head.]

a1522 G. Douglas in tr. Virgil Æneid (1959) viii. Prol. 32 The fillok hyr deformyt fax wald haue a fair face.

OE Antwerp Gloss. (1955) 48 Reticulum, feaxnet.

1837 W. M. Thackeray in Fraser's Mag. XVI. 644 (title) The Yellowplush correspondence. Fashnable fax and polite annygoats.

1945 (title of aviation news-sheet) Plane fax.

1977 Sounds 1 Jan. 20/1 Balanced fax about sniffin' are hard to come by—even Release, the London-based advice/aid centre is short on information.

1987 London Evening Standard 6 Mar. 25 (heading) Food fax.

1946 Billboard 27 Apr. 7/4 Home Fax 18 months away... Facsimile busted right out of the laboratory Wednesday..at a demonstration of the Hogan Faximile system for the press.

1948 Time 12 Jan. 62/3 The big news about ‘fax’ was that, technically, the bugs were pretty well worked out of it.

1957 Editor & Publisher 13 Apr. 57/1 (heading) Contrast cut from fax pix.

1969 Pop. Electronics Feb. 33/1 The facsimile process (or ‘fax’ as it is called in the trade) has had its ups and downs.

1971 D. M. Costigan Fax p. vii Probably the most impressive thing about facsimile (fax, for short)..is its enormous potential.

1972 Sci. Amer. Sept. 140/3 Futurists predict that a ‘fax’ terminal in the home or business office may someday supplement or even replace the mail carrier.

1976 New Scientist 30 Sept. 683/1 If the letter is put—by hand—on to a facsimile (‘fax’) machine for transmitting, this is acceptable, too. But it is equally possible for the computer to generate the fax signals electronically.

1980 J. McNeil Spy Game xvii. 179 I want a fax of the passport photo wired from Washington.

1984 Times 21 Feb. 25/1 STC Business Systems has launched a new fax machine equipped with automatic transmissions and stacking systems... It is claimed that it can transmit an A4 page across the world in 15 seconds.

1984 Daily Tel. 28 Nov. 8 (advt.) NEFAX is UK and European brand leader in fax.

1983 Forbes 29 Aug. 132/1 Most machines are now manufactured in Japan, even though they have American labels. This has turned the major American fax manufacturers into vendors.

1986 Personal Computing Dec. 162/2 Digital faxes are quite common in businesses, primarily because they use the same protocols and can communicate with each other regardless of manufacturer.

1987 Sunday Mail Mag. (Brisbane) 16 Aug. 8/2 He keeps permanently in touch with his Los Angeles office by portable fax and telex.

1989 Lit. Rev. Aug. 58/1 His Elizabethan forebears had nothing coming between them and their audience but the London air—no Fax or answer machine.

1979 Datamation Aug. 75/3 (heading) Who will fax the mail?

1983 Libr. Assoc. Rec. Nov. 406/1 The BLLD had installed a couple of machines and was prepared to fax requests to any library which had the necessary hardware to receive it, and was prepared to pay.

1984 Sunday Times 11 Mar. 69/1 Stories edited by journalists are sent by facsimile transmission—‘faxed’—across Europe to the printing works.

1986 Bookseller 3 Oct. 1422/2 Titles not in stock are gathered by the central computer and listed by publisher in ISBN sequence before being faxed, telexed or skypacked to the individual publishers.

1988 Newsweek 25 July 54/1 Evans is one happy faxer.

1982 Financial Times 7 Apr. iii. p. vii/1 Faxing systems are a rapidly growing part of business communications and British Telecom is determined to make them easier, simpler and cheaper.