Word.ws English Dictionary

take the wax out of one's ears

take the wax out of one's ears verb: to listen more carefully or pay closer attention.

Verb

take the wax out of one's ears (third-person singular simple present takes the wax out of one's ears, present participle taking the wax out of one's ears, simple past took the wax out of one's ears, past participle taken the wax out of one's ears)

  1. (derogatory, idiomatic, imperative, often, slang) To listen more carefully or pay closer attention.
    • Again, you see, they had not listened to me (how I wanted to take the wax out of their ears!), they did not wish to be turned from their pre-conceived notions.1943, Dorothy Fremont Grant, What Other Answer, page 247
    • I shall give it to them, and I ask the member for Horowhenua to take the wax out of her ears and sit and listen.1988, New Zealand, Parliament, House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates (Hansard), Volume 491, page 5824

Forms of take the wax out of one's ears

third-person singular presenttakes the wax out of one's ears
present participletaking the wax out of one's ears
pasttook the wax out of one's ears
past participletaken the wax out of one's ears

Questions about take the wax out of one's ears

What does take the wax out of one's ears mean?
Take the wax out of one's ears means to listen more carefully or pay closer attention.
What part of speech is take the wax out of one's ears?
Take the wax out of one's ears is a verb.
What is the past tense of take the wax out of one's ears?
The past tense of take the wax out of one's ears is took the wax out of one's ears.

Words near take the wax out of one's ears in the dictionary

  1. take the sun
  2. take the time
  3. take the trouble
  4. take the veil
  5. take the waters
  6. take the wax out of one's ears
  7. take the weight off
  8. take the weight off one's feet
  9. take the wheel
  10. take the wind out of someone's sails
  11. take the words out of someone's mouth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: take the wax out of one's ears (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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