Antedate of 'wax' = 'speak emotionally'

[Wilson Gray]

If I had any, I'd wax wroth.

-Wilson

On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 11:20 PM, Neal Whitman <nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
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> Poster:       Neal Whitman <nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET>
> Subject:      Antedate of 'wax' = 'speak emotionally'
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I'm wondering how recent is the semantic shift of 'wax' from its meaning of
> increasing or becoming to the newer meaning (via 'wax
> eloquent/poetic/nostalgic...') of speaking or writing emotionally and at
> length. The shift is evident when someone uses 'wax' without a following
> adjective ("He waxed about [topic]"), possibly with an adverb or adverbial
> particle ("They waxed eloquentLY/poeticalLY/nostalgicalLY...", or "She waxed
> ON/AWAY about [topic]...").
>
> This definition does not appear in the OED (though something close to it is
> online as a 2006 udpate). I found no attestations in Henrik DeSmet's Corpus
> of Late Modern English, which ends at 1920. I found 3 attestations in the
> earliest year (1990) of Mark Davies's Corpus of Contemporary American
> English. So my preliminary conclusion is that the innovation occurred
> sometime between 1920 and 1990, but I'd like a better idea when.
>
> Anyone have pre-1990 attestations?
>
> Neal
>
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--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

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