wax

What role does the wax in your earhole fulfill?

Any oily, water-resistant, solid or semisolid substance; normally long-chain hydrocarbons, alcohols or esters.

Any preparation containing wax, used as a polish.

What really started the corn sprouting on Broadway was a lugubrious tune by Louisiana's Jimmie Davis called It Makes No Difference Now. In the late '30s Decca's Recording Chief David Kapp heard this Texas hit and got it on wax.

(uncountable, music, informal) The phonograph record format for music.

(US, dialect) A thick syrup made by boiling down the sap of the sugar maple and then cooling it.

He was charged with two felonies, for possession of xanax and wax.

(US, slang) Any of a class of drugs with weed oil and butane as main ingredients; hash oil.

en-noun

wax (countable and uncountable, plural waxes)

cera

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


wax

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.

1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter X, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:


wax

waxed silk

(transitive) To coat with wax or a similar material.

en-verb

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

waxes (present singular third-person)
waxing (participle present)
waxed (participle past)
waxed (past)


wax

(transitive) To apply wax to (something, such as a shoe, a floor, a car, or an apple), usually to make it shiny.

(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.

(transitive, informal) To defeat utterly.

"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....

2005, David L. Robbins, Liberation Road: A Novel of World War II and the Red Ball Express, page 83:

"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?"

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

(transitive, slang) To kill, especially to murder a person.

(transitive, archaic, usually of a musical or oral performance) To record.

From Middle English waxen, from the noun (see above).


wax

Holonym: wax and wane

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.

c. 1595–1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “A Midsommer Nights Dreame”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to the True Originall Copies (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:

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.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], page 155:

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, […].

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

to wax poetic ― to become increasingly verbose

to wax wode ― to become angry

to wax eloquent

Ah, ſirrah, by my ſay, it waxes late:
 I’ll to my reſt.

c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v]:

He waxes desperate with imagination.

c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii], page 257:

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

1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Jeremiah 5:27:

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

1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume 2, London: Millar, →OCLC, page 289:

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.

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

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.

(intransitive, copulative, literary) To increasingly assume the specified characteristic.

(intransitive, of the moon) To appear larger each night as a progression from a new moon to a full moon.

(intransitive, of the tide) To move from low tide to high tide.

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

waxes (present singular third-person)
waxing (participle present)
waxed (past)
wex (archaic past)
wox (obsolete past)
waxed (participle past)
waxen (archaic dialectal participle past)

大きくなる (ōkiku naru, literally “to become bigger”)

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


wax

father Arnall's face looked very black but he was not in a wax: he was laughing.

1914, James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Chapter 1

‘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!’

1970, John Glassco, Memoirs of Montparnasse, New York, published 2007, page 161:

(dated, colloquial) An outburst of anger, a loss of temper, a fit of rage.

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


wax

This [Par]doner / hadde heer / as yelow as wex / But smothe it heeng as dooth a stryke of flex […]

1387–1400, [Geoffrey] Chaucer, “Here Bygynneth the Book of the Tales of Caunt́burẏ”, in The Tales of Caunt́bury (Hengwrt Chaucer; Peniarth Manuscript 392D), Aberystwyth, Ceredigion: National Library of Wales, published [c. 1400–1410], →OCLC, folio 10, verso:

This Pardoner had hair as yellow as wax, / but it hung smoothly like a bushel of flax […]

waxes (plural)
vax (alternative)
vex (alternative)
waxe (alternative)
waxs (alternative)
wex (alternative)
wexe (alternative)
wexs (alternative)

English: wax

Scots: wax

From Old English weax, from Proto-West Germanic *wahs, from Proto-Germanic *wahsą.


wax

English: wax