Poetic waxing is using flowery language to describe a simple topic. The word “wax” means “to grow.” Stanley Livingstone first used “wax poetics” in 1872. It can be effective in advertising. It helps people picture the product or experience in their minds.
Poetic waxing means using flowery or expressive language to describe a relatively trivial topic, or using elevated formal language to communicate a simple thought. A cook might wax poetic about his latest dessert; “overflowing with the rich chocolate lava poured from the volcano of love itself.” A car owner might wax poetic over the angelic hum of a perfectly tuned engine. You could even say that some people are philosophical about their new hobbies, or lyrical about their latest successes. Of all these expressions, however, the growing poetic seems to have survived the longest in modern usage.
The word wax in the expression does not refer to any waxy substance, such as candle wax or car wax. Instead, it is an archaic word that means “to grow”. Some people still refer to the “waxing and waxing” of the moon, for example. A crescent moon is growing in apparent size from a sliver to a crescent and finally to a full moon. A waning moon goes through the opposite phase, reducing the apparent size from full to “new” or completely dark. It was also common in ancient times to refer to a person who increased or grew in character or physical size. Early English literature contains references to the word weaxen, an Old English form of “wax.”
The use of expressions such as lyrical waxing or strong waxing can be traced back many centuries, but the first use of wax poetics is thought to be in a book written by the famous English physician Stanley Livingstone in 1872. Livingstone was referring to temptation of poetic wax about his experiences as a world traveler and physician. By becoming poetic about his own experiences, it could be seen as romanticizing the past or using unnecessarily florid language for the sake of the art alone.
Essentially, whenever a person becomes poetic about a topic that they are passionate about, there is always the temptation to exaggerate or glorify the topic at hand. Sometimes this accentuated and expressive language is effective. Indeed, many successful advertising campaigns are based on the concept of waxing poetic about a new food product or an exotic vacation destination or an alluring new fragrance. When done effectively, waxing poetic about an experience or product can help audiences picture it in their own minds. To become poetic would mean to grow or expand one’s language from the ordinary to the extraordinary, from the expected to the unexpected.
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