Entry · Thursday, October 8, 2026
Lava Lamp
/LAH-vuh lamp/ n.- 1. A domestic illumination device consisting of a tall glass vessel filled with translucent liquid and a contrasting wax compound that, when heated from below, detaches in slow, rounded globules and rises through the column in a continuous procession of buoyant, bottom-heavy forms; esp. one observed in full flow, each blob fuller than the last.
- 2. colloq. Curves in motion. The wax does not ascend so much as swell upward, each globule wider at the base than the top, rising with the unhurried confidence of something that has never once considered a diet. The lamp is technically the vessel. The wax is the show.
"Deb set a thiccc lava lamp on the credenza in the Scottsdale waiting room and nobody looked at the magazines again. The blobs rose in single file, each one thicccer than the last, like a slow-motion pageant with no elimination round."
From Italian lava (volcanic molten rock, from Latin lavare, 'to wash'), referring to the wax's flowing motion, plus Old English lēoma (light, gleam), contracted through Middle English into lamp. The device was invented by British accountant Edward Craven Walker in 1963 under the trade name Astro Lamp. He reportedly got the idea watching a homemade egg-timer bubbling in a pub. The wax, it turns out, had always been thiccc.
Filed by
The wax rises in slow rounded globules and each one is fuller than the one before it.
Ruling ADMITTED
Not 'fuller.' Denser and more buoyant. The continuous procession of bottom-heavy globules is documented. Admitted.
In the margin
Edward Craven Walker watched an egg-timer bubble in a pub and thought: I can scale this up and make it everyone's problem. He was correct.
Also received REJECTED
Submitted: a stick of chewing gum. The gum blob, when chewed, achieves a rounded wax-like mass not unlike a lava lamp globule.
It is a stick. The word stick is doing the work here.