Other forms: diesels
Diesel is the heavier of the two fuels at a filling station: the black pump, the oily smell on your hands, the taxi that rattles at the lights instead of humming. A diesel engine carries no spark plugs — it squeezes the air until it is hot enough to light the fuel on its own.
A diesel is also the thing that burns it. Drivers say she drives a diesel, and on the railways a diesel is a locomotive, the sort that pushed steam off the main lines in the 1950s and 60s. As a fuel the word is uncountable: you buy diesel and you fill up with diesel, never a diesel. It sits in front of other nouns constantly — diesel engine, diesel fumes, diesel train — and it is said DEE-zel, with a long first syllable, because it was somebody's surname before it was anything else.
1noundieselA heavy fuel that burns under pressure rather than from a spark.~30%
“The van runs on diesel.”
2nounvehicleA vehicle or engine that runs on that fuel.~61%
“He swapped the petrol car for a diesel.”
3nounrailA railway locomotive with an oil-burning engine.~9%
“The last steam engine on the line was replaced by a diesel.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 163 sentences found in the wild and placed 119 of them on a sense (44 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Diesel is a surname. Rudolf Diesel, working in Germany between 1892 and 1897, built a heavy-duty engine that lit its fuel by squeezing air instead of striking a spark, and spent the rest of his life perfecting it. German kept his name on the machine, English took it for the fuel as well, and now millions of people say a stranger's name every week at a pump without knowing it.
German
Diesel
English, today
diesel
Borrowed from German Diesel. From German Diesel, named after Rudolf Diesel, who developed a heavy-duty engine in Germany (1892–1897) and perfected it throughout his life.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA