"wax lyrical" meaning in English

See wax lyrical in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Verb

Forms: waxes lyrical [present, singular, third-person], waxing lyrical [participle, present], waxed lyrical [participle, past], waxed lyrical [past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|*}} wax lyrical (third-person singular simple present waxes lyrical, present participle waxing lyrical, simple past and past participle waxed lyrical)
  1. To speak very enthusiastically about something. Translations (speak very enthusiastically): 滔滔不絕 (Chinese Mandarin), 滔滔不绝 (tāotāobùjué) (Chinese Mandarin), puhua lennokkaasti (Finnish), puhua runollisesti (Finnish), vara lyrisk (Swedish)
    Sense id: en-wax_lyrical-en-verb-w1Z5Iauj Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header, Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for wax lyrical meaning in English (2.1kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "waxes lyrical",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "waxing lyrical",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "waxed lyrical",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "waxed lyrical",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "wax lyrical (third-person singular simple present waxes lyrical, present participle waxing lyrical, simple past and past participle waxed lyrical)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with redundant transliterations",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1960 March, G. Freeman Allen, “Europe's most luxurious express - the \"Settebello\"”, in Trains Illustrated, page 142",
          "text": "Axe-grinding columnists and politicians are therefore disingenuous when they wax lyrical about the quality of the meals served on the Continent by the International Wagons-Lits Company (and in France, though not in Italy, I personally have not found the quality outstanding for the high price demanded) [...].",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To speak very enthusiastically about something."
      ],
      "id": "en-wax_lyrical-en-verb-w1Z5Iauj",
      "links": [
        [
          "enthusiastically",
          "enthusiastically"
        ]
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
          "word": "滔滔不絕"
        },
        {
          "code": "cmn",
          "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
          "roman": "tāotāobùjué",
          "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
          "word": "滔滔不绝"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
          "word": "puhua lennokkaasti"
        },
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
          "word": "puhua runollisesti"
        },
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
          "word": "vara lyrisk"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "wax lyrical"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "waxes lyrical",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "waxing lyrical",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "waxed lyrical",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "waxed lyrical",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "*"
      },
      "expansion": "wax lyrical (third-person singular simple present waxes lyrical, present participle waxing lyrical, simple past and past participle waxed lyrical)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "English verbs",
        "Mandarin terms with redundant transliterations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1960 March, G. Freeman Allen, “Europe's most luxurious express - the \"Settebello\"”, in Trains Illustrated, page 142",
          "text": "Axe-grinding columnists and politicians are therefore disingenuous when they wax lyrical about the quality of the meals served on the Continent by the International Wagons-Lits Company (and in France, though not in Italy, I personally have not found the quality outstanding for the high price demanded) [...].",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To speak very enthusiastically about something."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "enthusiastically",
          "enthusiastically"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
      "word": "滔滔不絕"
    },
    {
      "code": "cmn",
      "lang": "Chinese Mandarin",
      "roman": "tāotāobùjué",
      "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
      "word": "滔滔不绝"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
      "word": "puhua lennokkaasti"
    },
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
      "word": "puhua runollisesti"
    },
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "speak very enthusiastically",
      "word": "vara lyrisk"
    }
  ],
  "word": "wax lyrical"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.