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Wax ‘soft oily substance’ [OE] and the now archaic wax ‘grow, become’ [OE] are distinct words. The former comes (together with German wachs, Dutch was, Swedish vax, and Danish vox) from a prehistoric Germanic *wakhsam. This in turn was descended from the Indo-European *weg- ‘weave’ (source also of English veil). Wax originally referred specifically to ‘bees-wax’, and the word’s underlying etymological reference is to the combs ‘woven’ from wax by bees. Russian and Czech vosk ‘wax’ come from the same ultimate source. The verb wax goes back to the Indo- European base *woks-, a variant of which has given English auction and augment. Although it has largely died out in English, its relatives in the other Germanic languages (meaning ‘grow’) are still very much alive: German wachsen, Dutch wassen, Swedish vāxa, and Danish vokse.
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