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Beeswax is the material a honeybee colony builds its comb from, and the oldest wax with a documented place in cosmetics: it sets the shape of a lipstick, thickens a balm, and holds oil and water together in a cream.

A synthetic silicone fluid sold in every viscosity from thinner than water to a cuttable gum, valued in cosmetics for spreading further than an oil of the same thickness and for leaving a dry rather than a greasy surface.

The greasy secretion sheep make to keep their fleece from rotting in the rain, recovered from wool-scouring liquor: chemically a wax rather than a fat, despite the old pharmacy name wool fat.

Ozokerite is a mineral wax, mined out of rock rather than distilled from crude oil, whose fine tangled crystals trap liquid oils and stop a lipstick sweating them out onto its own surface.

The semi-solid mixture of saturated hydrocarbons left when refined petroleum residue is dewaxed; it forms a barrier film that slows water loss, and under Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 the European Union permits it in cosmetics only where its refining history is documented.

A brittle silicone resin built from trimethylsilyl caps around a silica-like core; dissolved in a volatile solvent and left behind when that solvent evaporates, it is the film that makes a lipstick transfer-resistant.