Waxen describes something that looks or feels like wax: smooth, pale, and slightly unnatural. When someone's face appears waxen, it looks unusually pale and lifeless, with a waxy shine, like the surface of a candle. You might read about a character in a story whose fear or illness left their skin looking waxen, meaning it had that same smooth, colorless quality as wax that has cooled and hardened.

The word comes from wax, the material bees make for their honeycombs and that people use to make candles. Real wax has a distinctive appearance: smooth, slightly translucent, and often yellowish or very pale. Something waxen shares these qualities.

Writers often use waxen to create an eerie or unsettling mood. A waxen figure in a museum looks almost alive but not quite, existing in that strange space between lifelike and artificial. The word suggests something has lost its natural warmth or vitality.