wax

plural waxes

1. countableuncountableAny oily, water-resistant, solid or semisolid substance; normally long-chain hydrocarbons, alcohols or esters.
2. countableuncountableby ellipsisBeeswax (a wax secreted by bees).
3. countableuncountableby ellipsisEarwax (a wax secreted by the ears).

   What role does the wax in your earhole fulfill?

   Synonyms: cerumen

4. countableuncountableAny preparation containing wax, used as a polish.

   Synonyms: polish

5. informaluncountableentertainmentThe phonograph record format for music.

   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.

   1943, Time

   Synonyms: vinyl, record

6. UScountabledialectaluncountableA thick syrup made by boiling down the sap of the sugar maple and then cooling it.
7. UScountableslanguncountableAny of a class of drugs with weed oil and butane as main ingredients; hash oil.

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

1. not comparableMade of wax.

   1 more example

   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

   Synonyms: waxen

present singular third person waxes · participle present waxing · participle past waxed · past waxed

1. transitiveTo coat with wax or a similar material.

   waxed silk

2. intransitiveTo form a wax (a thick maple syrup).

   The syrup is waxing. Come and help yourselves.

   1932, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

present singular third person waxes · participle present waxing · participle past waxed · past waxed

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

   Synonyms: buff, shine, polish, furbish, burnish

2. transitiveTo 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. informaltransitiveTo defeat utterly.
4. slangtransitiveTo kill, especially to murder a person.

   "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

   1 more example

   "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

   Synonyms: bump off, knock off, whack, annihilate, bag, baptize, bereave of life, blight

5. archaictransitiveusuallyTo record.First known use 1900

present singular third person waxes · participle present waxing · past waxed · archaic past wex · obsolete past wox · participle past waxed · archaic participle past wex · obsolete participle past wox · archaic dialectal participle past waxen

1. intransitiveliteraryTo greaten.

   Holonym: wax and wane

   3 more examples

   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

   Antonyms: wane

2. copulativeintransitiveliteraryTo increasingly assume the specified characteristic.

   to wax wode

   to become angry

   5 more examples

   Near-synonyms: become, get, go, turn, come, fall, grow

   to wax poetic

   to become increasingly verbose

   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

   Synonyms: become, get, go, turn, come, fall, grow

3. intransitiveTo appear larger each night as a progression from a new moon to a full moon.
4. intransitiveTo move from low tide to high tide.

1. rareuncountableThe process of growing.

plural waxes

1. colloquialdatedAn outburst of anger, a loss of temper, a fit of rage.

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

   1916, James Joyce, chapter I, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, New York, N.Y.: B[enjamin] W. Huebsch, →OCLC

   1 more example

   ‘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

plural Waxes

1. A surname.