wax
/wæks/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.92 in modern English
13
Scrabble Score
3
Letters
1
Syllables
3
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
Any oily, water-resistant, solid or semisolid substance; normally long-chain hydrocarbons, alcohols or esters.
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A thick syrup made by boiling down the sap of the sugar maple and then cooling it.
American usage; Countable; Uncountable
noun
Any of a class of drugs with weed oil and butane as main ingredients; hash oil.
American usage; Countable; Slang; Uncountable
adj
Made of wax.
Example Sentences
- "What role does the wax in your earhole fulfill?"
- "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."
- "He was charged with two felonies, for possession of Xanax and 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."
- "waxed silk"
- "The syrup is waxing. Come and help yourselves."
Etymology
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”), German Low German Wass (“wax”), Luxembourgish Wuess (“wax”), Vilamovian wāhs (“wax”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk voks (“wax”), Faroese vaks (“wax”), Icelandic, Swedish vax (“wax”); and with Lithuanian vaškas (“wax”), Proto-Slavic *voskъ (“wax”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /wæks/
- British English: /waks/