Definition of "borax"

borax

noun
usually uncountable, plural boraxes or boraces
1. A white or gray/grey crystalline salt, with a slight alkaline taste, used as a flux, in soldering metals, making enamels, fixing colors/colours on porcelain, and as a soap, etc.
2. (chemistry) The sodium salt of boric acid, Na2B4O7, either anhydrous or with 5 or 10 molecules of water of crystallization; sodium tetraborate.
3. (sometimes attributive) Cheap or tawdry furniture or other works of industrial design.
  Quotations
  Furniture isn't made to last thirty years or longer because they took a survey and found that young homemakers like to throw their furniture out and bring in all new, color-coded borax every seven years.
  1977, Harlan Ellison, Jeffty is Five
verb
third-person singular simple present boraxes, present participle boraxing, simple past and past participle boraxed
1. (transitive) To treat with borax.