wax
noun · adjective · verb
Simple meaning
Any oily, water-resistant, solid or semisolid substance.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
waksIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwæks
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Any oily, water-resistant, solid or semisolid substance; normally long-chain hydrocarbons, alcohols or esters.
Any preparation containing wax, used as a polish.
Beeswax.
usslang
Any of a class of drugs with weed oil and butane as main ingredients; hash oil.
adjective
Made of wax.
verb
Cover with wax
transitive
To coat with wax or a similar material.
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.
intransitiveof the moon
To appear larger each night as a progression from a new moon to a full moon.
intransitiveof the tide
To move from low tide to high tide.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Any oily, water-resistant, solid or semisolid substance; normally long-chain hydrocarbons, alcohols or esters.
Used this way, wax is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use wax
- “She used car wax to make her vehicle shine brightly.”
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.