Without Wax

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 07:31:13 -0400

There is a story about the word sincere that you have probably heard. Roman sculptors, it goes, would hide cracks in bad marble with wax, and an honest sculptor advertised work that was sine cera, without wax. So a sincere person is one with no wax in the cracks. It is a lovely story. It is also, as far as anyone can tell, false.

The Online Etymology Dictionary says the “without wax” account is “dismissed out of hand” by the Oxford English Dictionary and called “untenable” by the Century Dictionary. The word came into English around 1530 from Latin sincerus, meaning pure or unmixed. Where sincerus itself came from is uncertain. One proposal reads it as “of one growth,” from roots meaning “one” and “to grow,” the way you might describe a plant that hasn’t been grafted. Another traces it to a lost adjective meaning “whole, intact.” Both point at the same idea: not mixed with anything else. Neither involves a sculptor.

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Without Wax