wax

• enPR: wăks, IPA^(key): /wæks/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -æks
• Homophones: whacks, wacks (in accents with the wine-whine merger)

From Old English weax, from Proto-Germanic *wahsą, from Proto-Indo-European *woḱ-so-. Cognate with Dutch was, German Wachs, Norwegian voks; and with Lithuanian vaškas, Proto-Slavic *voskъ (“wax”).

Beeswax, a kind of wax

wax (countable and uncountable, plural waxes)

1. Beeswax.
2. Earwax.

   What role does the wax in your earhole fulfill?

3. Any oily, water-resistant substance; normally long-chain hydrocarbons, alcohols or esters.
4. Any preparation containing wax, used as a polish.
5. (uncountable) The phonograph record format for music.
6. (US, dialectal) A thick syrup made by boiling down the sap of the sugar maple and then cooling it.
7. (US, slang) A type of drugs with as main ingredients weed oil and butane; hash oil

• (beeswax): beeswax
• (earwax): cerumen (medical term), earwax
• (polish): polish
• (phonograph record): disc/disk, record

wax (not comparable)

1. Made of wax.
   • 1918, W. B. Maxwell, chapter 10, in The Mirror and the Lamp:

     He looked round the poor room, at the distempered walls, and the bad engravings in meretricious frames, the crinkly paper and wax flowers on the chiffonier; and he thought of a room like Father Bryan's, with panelling, with cut glass, with tulips in silver pots, such a room as he had hoped to have for his own.

• waxen

See under the noun section above

wax (third-person singular simple present waxes, present participle waxing, simple past and past participle waxed)

1. (transitive) To apply wax to (something, such as a shoe, a floor, a car, or an apple), usually to make it shiny.
2. (transitive) To remove hair at the roots from (a part of the body) by coating the skin with a film of wax that is then pulled away sharply.
3. (transitive, informal) To defeat utterly.
4. (transitive, slang) To kill, especially to murder a person.
   • 2005, David L. Robbins, Liberation Road: A Novel of World War II and the Red Ball Express, page 83:

     "I was reassigned over from the 9th when the battalion CO got waxed on the road leading in." Ben kept his dismay to himself. Here was one more officer in the 90th who'd been on the job only hours or days, replacing commanders killed or wounded....

   • 2009, Dean R. Koontz and Ed Gorman, Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: City of Night, →ISBN, page 106:

     "You telling me you know who really waxed him and your mom?" / "Yeah," she lied. / "Just who pulled the trigger or who ordered it to be pulled?"

5. (transitive, archaic, usually of a musical or oral performance) To record. [from 1900]

• (apply wax to): polish
• (to make smooth and shiny by rubbing): buff, shine, polish, furbish, burnish
• (kill (slang)): bump off, knock off, whack

From Middle English waxen, from Old English weaxan (“to wax, grow, be fruitful, increase, become powerful, flourish”), from Proto-Germanic *wahsijaną (“to grow”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂weg- (“to grow, increase”). Cognate with Scots wax (“to grow”), West Frisian waakse (“to grow”), Low German wassen, Dutch wassen (“to grow”), German wachsen (“to grow”), Danish and Norwegian vokse (“to grow”), Swedish växa (“to grow”), Icelandic vaxa (“to grow”), Gothic 𐍅𐌰𐌷𐍃𐌾𐌰𐌽 (wahsjan, “to grow”); and with Ancient Greek ἀέξειν (aéxein), Latin auxilium. It is in its turn cognate with augeo. See eke.

wax (third-person singular simple present waxes, present participle waxing, simple past waxed or (archaic) wex, past participle waxed or (dialectal, archaic) waxen)

1. (intransitive, with adjective, literary) To increasingly assume the specified characteristic, become.

   to wax poetic;  to wax eloquent;  to wax wode

   • c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act I, Scene 5,

     Ah, sirrah, by my fay, it waxes late:

     I’ll to my rest.

   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Jeremiah 5:27,

     As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.

   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, London: Millar, OCLC 833558210, page 289:

     You behold, Sir, how he waxeth Wroth at your Abode here.

   • 1885, H. Rider Haggard, chapter 5, in King Solomon's Mines:

     The stars grew pale and paler still till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face.

   • 1900, Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie:

     In the night, or the gloomy chambers of the day, fears and misgivings wax strong, but out in the sunlight there is, for a time, cessation even of the terror of death.

2. (intransitive, literary) To grow.
   • c. 1590-97, William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, Scene 1,

     And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,

     And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear

     A merrier hour was never wasted there.

   • 1602, William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I, Scene 3, lines 11-14,

     For nature, crescent, does not grow alone

     In thews and bulks, but, as this temple waxes,

     The inward service of the mind and soul

     Grows wide withal.

   • 1922, Michael Arlen, “Ep./1/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:

     And so it had always pleased M. Stutz to expect great things from the dark young man whom he had first seen in his early twenties ; and his expectations had waxed rather than waned on hearing the faint bruit of the love of Ivor and Virginia—for Virginia, M. Stutz thought, would bring fineness to a point in a man like Ivor Marlay, […].

3. (intransitive, of the moon) To appear larger each night as a progression from a new moon to a full moon.
4. (intransitive, of the tide) To move from low tide to high tide.

• Older forms are: 2nd per. sing, waxest (archaic), 3rd per. sing. waxeth (archaic), and plural form waxen (obsolete).
• Alternative simple past form is wex (obsolete) and the alternative past participle is waxen (obsolete).

• (to assume specified characteristic): become

• (grow): wane
• (of the moon): wane

wax (uncountable)

1. (rare) The process of growing.

• wax-kernel
• waxless

Origin uncertain; probably from phrases like to wax angry, wax wode, and similar (see Etymology 2, above).

wax (plural waxes)

1. (dated, colloquial) An outburst of anger.
   • 1970, John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse, New York 2007, page 161:

     ‘That's him to a T,’ she would murmur; or, ‘Just wait till he reads this’; or, ‘Ah, won't that put him in a wax!’

• waxy

• waxen-kernel
• waxloke

wax ?

1. something