to wax poetic
4
8.8
- phrasal verb
- Informal
:
hablar de manera poética
- At the dinner party, he began to wax poetic about his travels in Europe, capturing everyone's attention.
Like it's just him waxing poetic about how perfect her face is.
- Like it's just him waxing poetic about how perfect her face is.
- I don't want to wax poetic here, but you know it.
- And he calls forth a passage from the pages of Whitby where the man almost waxed poetic.
- I won't wax poetic about it, but suffice to say it's the happiest I've ever been.
Examples
-
So many people have been waxing poetic about this superfood that I felt like I should give it a chance.
Blog text (6) -
Heyman says that it is his pleasure to introduce CM Punk, then waxes poetic about all of Punk's accomplishments and finer points.
Blog text (1) -
Like it's just him waxing poetic about how perfect her face is.
-
At this point of the season, do you really want me to wax poetic about Tennessee or the state of college football affairs?
Blog text (18) -
Allow this computer scientist, AI person to wax poetic about some biology for a bit.
-
Her fans wax poetic about her ability to weave East and West together.
-
Defenders of the Senate filibuster like to wax poetic about our structure of government.
Blog text (28) -
In arguing for the works' aesthetic excellence, Njami waxes poetic about the innate genius of the contemporary African artist.
Academic text (2008) -
Urbanites who sit sipping lattes while they wax poetic about hidden meanings, etc.
Blog text (24) -
When I get started on herbs and spices, inevitably I end up waxing poetic about rice paddy root.
Blog text (9)
Synonyms
To make something sound like a poem or more beautiful than it really is
Antonyms
How Poetic
Surface Forms
Morphology
The verb 'wax' here means 'to grow' or 'become', and combined with the adjective 'poetic' yields a straightforward sense of 'become poetic' (i.e., speak or write in a lyrical or ornate way). This become + adjective composition is cross-linguistically common and therefore a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reasonably infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
The phrase wax poetic comes from an older use of wax meaning 'to grow' or 'become'. Picture someone slowly becoming more poetic—their words get fuller and full of feeling, so the phrase now means 'to speak or write in a very emotional, flowery way'.