Word.ws English Dictionary

walling wax

walling wax noun: a mixture of wax and tallow used by etchers and engravers to make a bank, or wall, round the edge of a plate, so as to form a trough for holding the acid used in etching, etc.

Noun

walling wax (uncountable)

  1. A mixture of wax and tallow used by etchers and engravers to make a bank, or wall, round the edge of a plate, so as to form a trough for holding the acid used in etching, etc.
    • walling wax, to put round the plate, […]is made of bees wax, dissolved in a pipkin with horse turpentine1811, John Hassell, Calcographia

Questions about walling wax

What does walling wax mean?
Walling wax means a mixture of wax and tallow used by etchers and engravers to make a bank, or wall, round the edge of a plate, so as to form a trough for holding the acid used in etching, etc.
What part of speech is walling wax?
Walling wax is a noun.

Words near walling wax in the dictionary

  1. Wallin
  2. walling
  3. walling in
  4. walling off
  5. walling up
  6. walling wax
  7. Wallingantism
  8. Wallingat
  9. Wallingford
  10. Wallingfords
  11. wallings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: walling wax (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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