axis of evil

Meaning

Noun

• A group of states accused by George W. Bush of sponsoring terrorism and seeking weapons of mass destruction, originally defined as Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.
• An anomaly in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background as the result of a preferential axis which may have shaped the development of the universe, sometimes abbreviated AOE.

Origin

• and first used publicly by President George W. Bush in the 2002 State of the Union Address. Possibly from a historical analogy to the German-Italian-Japanese Axis. Extended to astrophysics by .