oil

Alternative forms

• oyl (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English oile (“olive oil”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman olie, from Latin oleum (“oil, olive oil”), from Ancient Greek ἔλαιον (élaion, “olive oil”), from ἐλαία (elaía, “olive”). More at olive. Supplanted Old English æl, ele, also from Latin.

Pronunciation

• enPR: oil, IPA^(key): /ɔɪl/, [ɔɪɫ]

• Audio (US)

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• Homophone: Oi'll
• Rhymes: -ɔɪl

Noun

oil (countable and uncountable, plural oils)

1. Liquid fat.
2. Petroleum-based liquid used as fuel or lubricant.
   • 2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

     The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices). It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led to a shortage of whale blubber.

3. An oil painting.
   • 1973, John Ulric Nef, Search for meaning: the autobiography of a nonconformist (page 89)

     Yet, in another way, I was unable to put Picasso's oils in the same class as Cezanne's, or even (which will no doubt shock many readers) as Renoir's.

Verb

oil (third-person singular simple present oils, present participle oiling, simple past and past participle oiled)

1. (transitive) To lubricate with oil.
   • 1900, L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Chapter 23:

     Before they went to see Glinda, however, they were taken to a room of the Castle, where Dorothy washed her face and combed her hair, and the Lion shook the dust out of his mane, and the Scarecrow patted himself into his best shape, and the Woodman polished his tin and oiled his joints.

   • 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 17, in The China Governess‎:

     The face which emerged was not reassuring.  […] . He was not a mongol but there was a deficiency of a sort there, and it was not made more pretty by a latter-day hair cut which involved eccentrically long elf-locks and oiled black curls.

2. (transitive) To grease with oil for cooking.

Anagrams

• ILO, LOI, Loi

Etymology 1

From Old Irish ail, oil (“disgrace, reproach; act of reproaching; blemish, defect”).

Etymology 2

From Old Irish ailid, oilid (“nourishes, rears, fosters”) (compare altram (“fosterage”), from a verbal noun of [Term?] (“ailid”)).

Etymology 3

Verb

oil (present analytic oileann, future analytic oilfidh, verbal noun oiliúint, past participle oilte)

1. (intransitive) Alternative form of oir (“suit, fit, become”)

Mutation

Further reading

• "oil" in Foclóir Gaeilge-Béarla, An Gúm, 1977, by Niall Ó Dónaill.
• “2 ail (‘disgrace, reproach’)” in Dictionary of the Irish Language, Royal Irish Academy, 1913–76.
• “1 ailid (‘nourish, foster’” in Dictionary of the Irish Language, Royal Irish Academy, 1913–76.

Etymology 1

A contraction of o il, from Vulgar Latin *hoc ille (“thus (he)...”),^[1] or perhaps rather hoc illud est, an elliptical phrase of response, by semantic erosion/grammaticalization.

Cognate to Old Occitan oc (Occitan òc), where the connection to Latin hoc is clearer.

Etymology 2

See ueil.

Noun

oil m (oblique plural ouz or oilz, nominative singular ouz or oilz, nominative plural oil)

1. Alternative form of ueil

Noun

oil

1. water
2. sap

References

• Blust's Austronesian Comparative Dictionary