Word.ws English Dictionary

wax poetic

UK/ˈwæks pəʊˈɛtɪk/US/ˈwæks poʊˈɛtɪk/

wax poetic verb: to become increasingly verbose.

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To become increasingly verbose.
  2. (derogatory, intransitive, often) To speak in an increasingly verbose manner, as if constructing poetry.

Forms of wax poetic

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

Origin of wax poetic

From wax (“become”) + poetic.

Questions about wax poetic

What does wax poetic mean?
Wax poetic means to become increasingly verbose.
What part of speech is wax poetic?
Wax poetic is a verb.
How do you pronounce wax poetic?
Wax poetic is pronounced /ˈwæks pəʊˈɛtɪk/ (UK).
What is the past tense of wax poetic?
The past tense of wax poetic is waxed poetic.

Words near wax poetic in the dictionary

  1. wax pencils
  2. wax philosophical
  3. wax plant
  4. wax plants
  5. wax play
  6. wax poetic
  7. wax point
  8. wax points
  9. wax print
  10. wax someone's tail
  11. wax tablet

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wax poetic (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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Cite this entry: “wax poetic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/wax_poetic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.