Other forms: coaxed, coaxing, coaxes
To coax is to gently talk somebody into doing something. Coax him out, coax a smile, coaxed into agreeing.
The gentleness is essential: coaxing is persuading by patience and warmth rather than by argument or pressure, which is why it suits children, animals and reluctant machinery. Coax a fire into life is the standard use with objects. Note coaxing as an adjective; and that the word once meant to make a fool of somebody, which is a considerably less pleasant origin.
1verbspeechTo gently talk somebody into doing something.
“She coaxed the frightened child down from the tree with promises of ice cream.”
coax is a gentle persuading.
The word appears in 1586 in a phrase meaning to make a fool of somebody, from an old noun cokes, a simpleton, of obscure origin. The gentle sense came later.
Built from
Originally (1586) in the slang phrase to make a coax of, from earlier noun coax, cox, cokes "fool, simpleton", itself of obscure origin, perhaps related to cock (“male bird, pert boy”). The modern spelling is from 1706.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA