Other forms: oils
Oil is the liquid fat you fry things in, and the crude liquid pumped from the ground. Olive oil, hot oil, an oil rig.
Cooking oils differ in smoke point, which is the temperature at which they start to break down and taste burnt — which is why some are for frying and some for dressing. Crude oil is the same word for a very different thing. Note oil painting; burn the midnight oil; and that oil comes from the Greek for olive, so every oil in English is named after that one fruit.
1nounoilThe liquid fat used in cooking.
“Heat a little oil in the pan before you add the onions.”
Patternolive / vegetable / cooking oil · a drop / tablespoon of oil · fry in oil · oil and vinegar · oily
2nouncrudeThe crude liquid pumped from the ground.
“The country grew rich after oil was discovered under the desert.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
oil is a liquid fat.
OIL → the first came from OLIVES
The first oil was pressed out of olives, and the word came with them. Now it is whatever goes into the hot pan first.
Latin oleum meant olive oil, from Greek elaion, from elaia, an olive. Every later oil borrowed the name, so petroleum is literally rock olive oil.
Middle English
oyle
English, today
oil
Built from
From Middle English oyle. From Middle English oyle, oile (“olive oil”), borrowed from Old French oile, from Latin oleum (“oil, olive oil”), from Ancient Greek ἔλαιον (“olive oil”), from ἐλαία (“olive”). Compare Proto-Slavic lojь. More at olive. a doublet of oleum. Supplanted Middle English ele (“oil”), from Old English ele (“oil”), also from Latin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA