Word.ws English Dictionary

wax lyrical

wax lyrical verb: to speak very enthusiastically about something.

Verb

wax lyrical (third-person singular simple present waxes lyrical, present participle waxing lyrical, simple past and past participle waxed lyrical)

  1. To speak very enthusiastically about something.
    • Axe-grinding columnists and politicians are therefore disingenuous when they wax lyrical about the quality of the meals served on the Continent by the International Wagons-Lits Company (and in France, though not in Italy, I personally have not found the quality outstanding for the high price...1960 March, G. Freeman Allen, “Europe's most luxurious express - the "Settebello"”, in Trains Illustrated, page 142

Forms of wax lyrical

third-person singular presentwaxes lyrical
present participlewaxing lyrical
past participlewaxed lyrical
pastwaxed lyrical

Questions about wax lyrical

What does wax lyrical mean?
Wax lyrical means to speak very enthusiastically about something.
What part of speech is wax lyrical?
Wax lyrical is a verb.
What is the past tense of wax lyrical?
The past tense of wax lyrical is waxed lyrical.

Words near wax lyrical in the dictionary

  1. wax flower
  2. wax flowers
  3. wax gourd
  4. wax gourds
  5. wax insect
  6. wax lyrical
  7. wax moth
  8. wax moths
  9. wax museum
  10. wax museums
  11. wax myrtle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wax lyrical (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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