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Bitumen   /bˌɪtˈumən/  /bˌaɪtˈumən/   Listen
noun
Bitumen  n.  
1.
Mineral pitch; a black, tarry substance, burning with a bright flame; Jew's pitch. It occurs as an abundant natural product in many places, as on the shores of the Dead and Caspian Seas. It is used in cements, in the construction of pavements, etc. See Asphalt.
2.
By extension, any one of the natural hydrocarbons, including the hard, solid, brittle varieties called asphalt, the semisolid maltha and mineral tars, the oily petroleums, and even the light, volatile naphthas.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Bitumen" Quotes from Famous Books



... though, for it is a fine and instructive collection. And the work is all very good of its kind. You notice that the Ushabti figures and the heads that form the stoppers of the Canopic jars are quite finely modelled. The mummy itself, too, is rather handsome, though that coat of bitumen on the back doesn't improve it. But Sebek-hotep must ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman

... we have seen, generate sulphureted hydrogen and muriatic acid, upheave tracts of land, and omit streams of melted feldspathic materials; salses, on the contrary, disengage little else but carbureted hydrogen, together with bitumen and other products of the distillation of coal, and pour forth no other torrents except of mud, or argillaceous materials mixed up with water. Daubeney, op ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt

... given them is likely to be even approximately correct, and they may as well date from B.C. 12,000 as from B.C. 8000. Of one fact, however, we may be quite certain; that is to say, that the oldest human remains that have been found in Egypt bear upon them traces of the use of bitumen, which proves that the Egyptians at the very beginning of their stay in the valley of the Nile made some attempt to preserve their dead by means of mummification. [Footnote: See J. de Morgan, Ethnographie Prehistorique, Paris, 1897, p. 189.] If they were, as many think, ...
— Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life • E. A. Wallis Budge

... plains, one elevated, the other depressed. The latter is by some held to be the original bottom of the lake, and the former to have been caused by the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. But this also is only a fancy. The bitumen, which is found in such large quantities in and near the lake, is a symptom and remnant of the volcanic nature of the region. Several lines of earthquake are traced from it in a north-eastern direction; and it is conjectured that the three lakes, Merom, Tiberias, and Asphaltites, ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... receive the Sun's rays. Do you not see in our fires, that various kinds of wood produce different colors? Pines and firs give a flame mixed with thick smoke, and throw out little light. That which rises from sulphur and thick bitumen is bluish. Lighted straw gives out sparks of a reddish color. The large olive, laurel, ash of Parnassus, etc., trees which always retain their sap, throw a whitish light similar to that of a lamp. Thus, comets whose fires are formed of different materials, ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various


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