wax

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)Beeswax.
2. (countable, uncountable)Earwax.

   “What role does the wax in your earhole fulfill?”

3. (countable, uncountable)Any oily, water-resistant, solid or semisolid substance; normally long-chain hydrocarbons, alcohols or esters.
4. (countable, uncountable)Any preparation containing wax, used as a polish.
5. (informal, uncountable)The 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.”

6. (US, countable, dialectal, uncountable)A thick syrup made by boiling down the sap of the sugar maple and then cooling it.
7. (US, countable, slang, uncountable)Any 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.”

8. (rare, uncountable)The process of growing.
9. (colloquial, dated)An 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.”

   “‘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!’”

adj

1. (not-comparable)Made of 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.”

verb

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

   “waxed silk”

2. (intransitive)To form a wax (a thick maple syrup).

   “The syrup is waxing. Come and help yourselves.”

3. (transitive)To apply wax to (something, such as a shoe, a floor, a car, or an apple), usually to make it shiny.
4. (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.
5. (informal, transitive)To defeat utterly.
6. (slang, transitive)To kill, especially to murder a person.

   “"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....”

   “"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?"”

7. (archaic, transitive, usually)To record.
8. (intransitive, literary)To greaten.

   “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.”

   “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.”

   “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, […].”

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

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

   “to wax poetic”

   “to wax wode”

   “to wax eloquent”

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

10. (intransitive)To appear larger each night as a progression from a new moon to a full moon.
11. (intransitive)To move from low tide to high tide.

name

1. A surname.