verbs - Is there any other way you can "wax" as you do when you "wax philosophical"?


The wax in the phrase "wax philosophical" is a pretty strange bird. Its wax is obviously not the ordinary definition of wax, which my dictionary summarizes as an "oily, water-resistant substance", a definition which also serves as a fair summary of other, closely related "waxes", as in earwax or beeswax.


Neither is, I think, the wax in "wax philosophical" referring to another sense of wax, as in to grow, and which I know best in reference to the Moon "waxing and waning"; it means, as best I know, that the Moon is shrinking and growing in size. So is waxing philosophical "growing philosophical"? Sounds pretty strange to me.


The truth is, I only know how to use this set phrase, and can't really break it down into its constituents. It seems fairly archaic; the philosophical isn't even in the standard canonical form of an adverb, with no ending "–ly". So I was wondering three things: What is the canonical definition of wax as its being used here? In what other ways can you wax? Finally, if wax is acting as a verb here, why is it philosophical, as an adjective, and not philosophically as an adverb?



Answer



Merriam-Webster gives sense 3 for 3wax:



3: to assume a (specified) characteristic, quality, or state : become <wax indignant> <wax poetic>”



COCA gives a nice list of adjectives that are used this way with the verb wax:


 WAX ELOQUENT
 WAX ENTHUSIASTIC
 WAX EUPHORIC
 WAX INDIGNANT
 WAX LYRICAL
 WAX NOSTALGIC
 WAX PHILOSOPHIC
 WAX PHILOSOPHICAL
 WAX POETIC
 WAX PROFESSIONAL
 WAX RHAPSODIC
 WAX SENTIMENTAL

When I saw this question, I thought of the phrase “wax poetic” before “wax philosophical”. Indeed, “poetic” occurs 88 times in the corpus with verb wax compared to just 30 for “philosophical”.


And of course there is the Sponge album and song “Wax Ecstatic”.


EDIT: Google N-gram usage data for wax + the above adjectives, with credit to hippietrail:


N-gram data for


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