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Petroleum   /pətrˈoʊliəm/   Listen
Petroleum

noun
1.
A dark oil consisting mainly of hydrocarbons.  Synonyms: crude, crude oil, fossil oil, oil, rock oil.



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"Petroleum" Quotes from Famous Books



... Tom considered her. Wichita Falls was overcrowded with oil men, drawn thither by the town-site strike at Burkburnett, a few miles northwest, and excitement was mounting as new wells continued to come in. Central north Texas was nearing an epoch-making petroleum boom, for Ranger, away to the south, had set the oil world by the ears, and now this new sand at "Burk" lent color to the wild assertion that these north counties were completely underlaid with ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... Prosperity. Growth of the West. Indian Outbreaks. Improvements farther East. Canals and Railroads. The Steam Horse in the West. Morse's Telegraph. Ocean Cables. Minor Inventions. Petroleum. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... then—the United States of America, the Cape Colony, Australia, and New Zealand—spent much of the nineteenth century in the frantic giving away of land for ever to any casual person who would take it. Was there coal, was there petroleum or gold, was there rich soil or harborage, or the site for a fine city, these obsessed and witless Governments cried out for scramblers, and a stream of shabby, tricky, and violent adventurers set out to found a new section of the landed aristocracy ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells

... heart, a great black-mustachioed countess, with a voice like a fish-crier; here, he says, I shall meet all the best company in Urbania and some beautiful women—ah, too beautiful, alas! I find three huge half-furnished rooms, with bare brick floors, petroleum lamps, and horribly bad pictures on bright washball-blue and gamboge walls, and in the midst of it all, every evening, a dozen ladies and gentlemen seated in a circle, vociferating at each other the same news a year old; the younger ladies in bright yellows and greens, fanning themselves ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee

... with this man-mewing," he cried—"with these outbursts of ignorance. A fine magnificence, truly! all made up of gas and petroleum! I can't eat such stuff as that. Everything here is so fine and bright now, that one's ashamed of one's self, without exactly knowing why. Ah, if we only lived in the days of tallow candles! and it ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... showing the relative values of the principal petroleum products manufactured in the United States from 1899 to ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith

... A faint smell of petroleum was in the air as we threaded our way among the blue-ended barrels and lengths of oily hose. In one way this ship of Mr. Carville's was novel to me. There was about her decks no noise of cranes lifting cargo, no open hatchways, no whiffs of steam or screaming of pulley-blocks, ...
— Aliens • William McFee

... 18. Petroleum, raw or unrefined, according to the classification fixed in the existing orders for the importation of this article ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison

... spinning jenny replaced the spinning wheel, and famine stalked through English villages. The railroad supplanted the stagecoach, and a thousand hill towns died while as many sprang up in the valleys, and the farmers of the East were pauperized by the new agriculture of the West. Petroleum succeeded whale-oil, and a hundred seaports withered. Coal and iron were found in the South, and the grass grew in the streets of the Northern centers of iron-making. Electricity succeeded steam, ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy

... offer, good or bad, and to drink it down to the dregs, fully determined that whatever there was in it she would have, and that whatever could be made out of it she would manufacture. "I know," said she, "that America produces petroleum and pigs; I have seen both on the steamers; and I am told it produces silver and gold. There is ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... bears, wolverines, martens, foxes, and hares, but a species of white buffalo or white musk ox, which may have been the mountain goat above referred to. He noted, in the cliffs or banks of the lower Mackenzie, pieces of "petroleum" which bore a resemblance to yellow wax but was more friable. His Indian guide informed him that rocks of a similar kind were scattered about the country at the back of the Slave Lake, near where the Chipewayans collected ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... "There's petroleum whar that ore is—sure. An' ef I could strike it, boys, why, why I'd jest hang my Lily with di'monds from her head to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... petroleum launch is to arrive here, so that will console me a little, as I love to be on the water: and the Savoy side is starred with pretty villages ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... during the skirmish. The camels inside had to lie down, and thus served very well as cover for the rear of the trenches. Then an inner wall was constructed, behind which we carried the sick men. In the very centre we buried two jars of water, to guard us against thirst. In addition we had ten petroleum cans full of water; all told, a supply for four days. Late in the evening Sami's wife came back from the futile negotiations, alone. She had unveiled for the first and only time on this day of the skirmish, had distributed cartridges, and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... soil in its lowlands and valleys unsurpassed in any of the Plantations for its capacity to produce wheat, corn, and tobacco, its mountains filled with untold treasures of lime, iron, and coal, (and, it now seems, with petroleum also,) and withal that wonderful variety of natural resources, which seems best suited to stimulate and reward the productive industry of ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... gaze from an open bay-window on the indolent scene—the thin haze, the Fishkill hills in the distance—off on the river, a sloop with slanting mainsail, and two or three little shad-boats. Over on the railroad opposite, long freight trains, sometimes weighted by cylinder-tanks of petroleum, thirty, forty, fifty cars in a string, panting and rumbling along in full view, but the sound soften'd ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... early days of Fortune's pregnant alternations of colour between the Red and the Black, exhibited publicly, as it were a petroleum spring of the ebony-fiery lake below, Black-Forest Baden was the sprightliest' of the ante-chambers of Hades. Thither in the ripeness of the year trooped the devotees of the sable goddess to perform sacrifice; and annually ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... railroads and canals, farms, manufactures, commerce, towns, and cities. Then we must consider the superior natural advantages of Virginia, her far greater area, her richer soil, her more genial sun, her greater variety of products, her mines of coal, iron, gold, copper, and lead, her petroleum, her superior hydraulic power, her much larger coast line, with more numerous and deeper harbors—and reflect what Virginia would have been in the absence of slavery. Her early statesmen, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and all the processes for cutting and polishing. Minerals of all kinds, natural mineral paints and fertilizers, cement, luminants and waters. Asbestos, mica, coal, coal oil and all the machinery for refining and storing it. Displays for natural gas, petroleum; everything relating to lighting mines; safety lamps; oils; electricity; acetyline. Most interestin' display in geology; all kinds of rocks; crystal; clay; ores; nickel and all the metals for making iron and ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... which has for two centuries brewed for itself a "fish-house punch" as delicious as that of London civic banquets. There be no fish in the fair river now; they have all vanished before the combined forces of petroleum and the offal of factories and mines, but the Fish-House Club still has its merry banquets in its ancient home; for, as the French say, "Chacun peche a sa maniere." In graveyards lone or over gardens green glittered of summer nights millions of fireflies; ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... "Petroleum, rock oil, or what the Welsh call it, Ymenin tylwyth teg, or Fairies' butter, has been found in the lime stone strata in our mineral country. It is a greasy substance, of an agreeable smell, and, I suppose, ascribed to the benign part of ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen

... and where it has free course under favorable circumstances it doubles in twenty-five or thirty years. In two centuries more we shall begin to feel a terrible pressure, and that pressure will be aggravated by the exhaustion of coal mines, of petroleum, of gas, and of forests. In Great Britain alone 120,000,000 tons of coal ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... by a wine-shop round which were gathered many of the worse specimens of the Moblots and National Guards, mostly drunk, and loudly talking in vehement abuse of generals and officers and commissariat. By one of the men, as he came under the glare of a petroleum lamp (there was gas no longer in the dismal city), he was recognised as the commander who had dared to insist on discipline, and disgrace honest patriots who claimed to themselves the sole option between fight and flight. The man was one of those patriots—one ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... That is what would happen to you if you were run down by a motor-car in Holland. The name comes from 'snell,' rapid; 'paardeloos,' horseless; 'zoondeerspoorweg,' without rails; 'pitroolrijtung,' driven by petroleum. Only a Dutchman ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas

... is the same from one end to another, with its numberless petroleum lamps burning, its many-colored lanterns flickering, and innumerable panting djins. Always the same narrow streets, lined on each side with the same low houses, built in paper and wood. Always the same shops, without glass windows, open to all ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti

... shrieks, as if the prisoners had immediately been put to the torture, came from the station as Ferris opened the door. A lamp of petroleum lighted the scene, and shone upon the figures of two fishermen, who bewailed themselves unintelligibly in the vibrant accents of Chiozza, and from time to time advanced upon the gondoliers, and shook their heads and beat their breasts ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells

... he became a public institution, as unmistakable and as national as the Library of Congress or the Democratic Party. Even in the latest years of his life, though long since dissociated in fact from the category of Artemus Ward, John Phoenix, Josh Billings, and Petroleum V. Nasby, Mark Twain could never be sure that his most solemn utterance might not be drowned in roars of ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... nouns in um, some have no need of the plural; as, bdellium, decorum, elysium, equilibrium, guaiacum, laudanum, odium, opium, petroleum, serum, viaticum. Some form it regularly; as, asylums, compendiums, craniums, emporiums, encomiums, forums, frustums, lustrums, mausoleums, museums, pendulums, nostrums, rostrums, residuums, vacuums. Others take either the English or the Latin plural; as, desideratums ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... only possible manner of putting a stop to the revolution started by MacIan and Turnbull. These two find all the persons they had met with during their odyssey, packed away in the asylum, which is a wonderful place worked by petroleum machinery. But the matter-of-fact grocer from the Channel Island, regarding the whole affair as an infringement of the Rights of Man, sets the petroleum alight. Michael, the celestial being who had appeared in the first chapter and ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... fewer than four hundred and forty-seven industries employed more than a million dollars of capital each. The manufacturing of cotton, woolen and silk for the rest of the country was done here; foundry products, iron and steel manufactures, silver and brass goods, refined petroleum, boots and shoes, paper and books, with a host of other articles, were sent from this section to every part of the world. All along the line, from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, capital engaged in manufacturing doubled between 1880 and 1890, and the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... principal perils attending oil-seeking is that of fire. Petroleum, in its crude state, is so highly impregnated with gas and with naphtha, or benzine as to be very inflammable,—a fact proved, indeed, many years ago, when, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... under-water torpedo tubes ahead and two astern. The funnels emitted no smoke, but merely supplied draught to the petroleum furnaces, which burned with practically no waste, and developed a head of steam which drove the long submerged hulls through the water at a rate of thirty-two knots, or more ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith

... is.—This indispensable household requisite is a product of petroleum, from which it is obtained by an elaborate system of nitration, without the addition or aid of any chemical whatever. The substance thus produced, to which the name of "Vaseline" has been given, is ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous

... via Paris, just now; but we don't want the incendiary's pillar of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to lead us in the march to civilization, and we don't want a Moses who will smite rock, not to bring out water for our thirst, but petroleum to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... really made in this way, only it is already mixed in the water in which the grains fermented and from which people then distil it. Gasoline and kerosene are distilled from petroleum; there is a whole series of substances that come from the crude oil, one after the other, according to their boiling points, and what is left is the foundation for a number of products, including paraffine ...
— Common Science • Carleton W. Washburne

... hurt, and there are so few of us that we cannot afford to have any casualties before coming to close quarters. Be good enough to see to this, if you please, and while you are forward get one of the men to open and start a drum of petroleum into the tank of the fire engine, and put the nozzle of the hose into the tank to soak, so that our wick arrangement round the jet may get thoroughly saturated with oil against the time that we shall want to use it. At the same ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood

... speculations in wheat and the formation of the French copper corner caused a certain fluctuation in general business. Large crops, excepting wheat; a flourishing cotton manufacture, a decline in production of petroleum by agreement, a 6 per cent. decline in pig-iron production, a very heavy one in Bessemer iron, and a very small export trade as compared with imports occurred. But in the year 1889, the export movement, consisting largely of cotton, was very great, being the ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar

... denied, not simply but cum modo, with a qualification. And some Logicians have considered any adverb occurring in the predicate, or any sign of past or future tense, enough to constitute a modal: as 'Petroleum is dangerously inflammable'; 'English will be the universal language.' But far the most important kind of modality, and the only one we need consider, is that which is signified by some qualification of the predicate as to the degree of certainty with which ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... Earth's industry is switching back to petroleum and coal. Every ounce of radioactives is needed by the Fleet. Even so, it's ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... feature, were quite lost upon those who did not understand the language. The place chosen for the representation was a spot of ground outside of our houses, the heat being very great; and here a circle was formed of carpets and chairs, lighted by torches dipped in petroleum, which threw a brilliant flare around, though accompanied by ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... the interior of an utterly barren country, with roads to make, and all skilled labour and materials to import, it would have been a losing concern. Gold also occurs, but very sparingly and of poor quality. A fine spring of pure petroleum was discovered far in the interior, where it can never be available until the country is civilized. The whole affair was a dreadful disappointment to the Portuguese Government, who had considered it such a ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... lengths and types of pipelines for transporting products like natural gas, crude oil, or petroleum products. ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... that an American merchant ship had been wrecked near the mouth of the Pahang River, and that the Malays, who were at the time in revolt against the English Resident, had taken possession of its cargo of petroleum and made ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... Garden of the Empire. Its area is about that of France, its climate is even superior—a land delightfully accidentee. Among the minerals found are gold, silver, cinnabar, copper, iron, coal and petroleum; the chief products being opium, white wax, hemp, yellow silk. Szech'wan is a province rich in salt, obtained from artesian borings, some of which extend 2,500 feet below the surface, and from which for centuries the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... for the experts decided that the new oil which spouted forth in such vast quantities was too heavy and malodorous to serve as an illuminant. Presently, however, it was discovered that this defect was a virtue, for here was a non-explosive petroleum that could be utilized in great quantities as a fuel, and work was hastened with renewed vigor, for now California possessed the monopoly of the one great need, not only of herself, but of all ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various

... the roads leading to great riches were as few as those leading to a competency were many. He could not prospect for mines of gold and of silver, of iron, copper, and coal; he could not discover and work wells of petroleum and natural gas; he could not build up, sell, and speculate in railroad systems and steamship companies; he could not gamble in the stock market; he could not build huge manufactories of steel, of cottons, of woollens; ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... The petroleum exhibit was made under the general direction of Secretary and Chief Executive Officer Charles A. Ball. An extensive series of crude and refined oils and by-products occupied a case showing on both sides. On this was installed a model ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... may be easily removed in this way: With a one-and-a-quarter-inch auger, bore a hole in the centre of the stump, eighteen inches deep, and put in twenty ounces of saltpetre; fill the hole with water and plug it tight. In the spring, take out the plug, pour into the hole a half-pint of crude petroleum and set it on fire. The stump will burn and smolder to the end of the roots, leaving nothing ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various

... flight of stairs, over a knot of children, half babies, pitching pennies on the landing, over wash-tubs and bedsteads that encumbered the next—house-cleaning going on in that "flat"; that is to say, the surplus of bugs was being turned out with petroleum and a feather—up still another, past a half-open door through which came the noise of brawling and curses. She dodged and quickened her step a little until she stood panting before a door on the fourth landing that opened ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... conquered by the militia, at Baltimore (Maryland), a city of 300,000 inhabitants, they have been victorious. They have taken possession of the station and have burned it, together with all the wagons of petroleum which were there. At Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), a city of 100,000 inhabitants, the workers are at the present time masters of the city, after having seized guns and cannon.... The strike is extending to the near-by railroads and is gaining in the direction of the Pacific. Great agitation reigns ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... discovery of petroleum, whale oil was generally used for lighting. Whaling was then one of the big businesses of our country. Our whalers sought their game in all the waters of the world where the big animals were to be found. A whaling cruise usually lasted from two to ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... to the government by the auctioneers is provided light and water, the cleansing of the halls and the carting away of refuse for destruction. Strict regulations govern the inspection of the fish and to ensure the destruction of those that have deteriorated they are sprinkled with petroleum ...
— A Terminal Market System - New York's Most Urgent Need; Some Observations, Comments, - and Comparisons of European Markets • Mrs. Elmer Black

... got my bags out of the steamer and carried them up through the crowd of women and donkeys that were still struggling on the quay in an inconceivable medley of flour-bags and cases of petroleum. When I reached the inn the old woman was in great good humour, and I spent some time talking by the kitchen fire. Then I groped my way back to the harbour, where, I was told, the old net-mender, who came to see me on my first visit to the islands, was spending ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... edge to catch the rainwater, and so to replenish their supply, kept in bags on each side, and now handed about in glasses as "travelled liquor," to wash down biscuits, still surplus from the "sea store." Their cooking apparatus was at first worked by petroleum, but this speedily burned the metal out, and they were driven to manufacture a very ramshackle sort of oil-lamp, fed by the oil for their ship-light and their compass, and by some supplied from ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor

... in trees, which are wantonly cut down for any trifling purpose, regardless of their value or the possible scarcity in the future of timber. Accidental forest fires also work sad havoc at times, destroying thousands of pounds' worth of timber in a few hours. Pine resin burns almost as fiercely as petroleum, and it sometimes takes days ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... distributed, being a constituent of water as well as of all living organisms, and the products derived from them, such as starch and sugar. About 10% of the human body is hydrogen. Combined with carbon, it forms the substances which constitute petroleum and natural gas. ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... from Asterabad, Mazanderan, and the Caspian coast. The mountains overlooking it are bare and rocky. A good trade seems to be done by several firms of Russian-Armenians in exporting wool, cotton, and pelts to Russia, and handling Russian iron and petroleum. But for the iniquitous method of taxation, which consists really of looting the producing classes of all they can stand, the volume of trade here might easily be tenfold ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... a narrow and shallow sea from the State of Eglonsby; it was dotted with islands, and every one of them was, in turn, dotted with oil wells. Petroleum was what kept the aircraft and ground-vehicles of Amaterasu in operation; oil, rather than ideology, was at the root of the enmity between the two nations. Apparently the Stolgonian espionage in Eglonsby was completely deceived, and the reports Trask allowed the captive ambassador to make confirmed ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... to come in. Eleven bombs in all were dropped on this first attack, killing nobody and doing no serious harm, except possibly at the arsenal where one fell. I was at the local police station when one of the unexploded bombs was brought in. It was of the incendiary type containing petroleum. Also there had been picked up somewhere in the canals the half of a Munich newspaper, which seemed to indicate, although there was nothing of special significance in the sheet, that the monoplane was German rather than Austrian. Yet Germany had not yet declared war on ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick

... began again during the night. Next morning it was found that an island had risen out of the sea, between nine and ten feet in height, surrounded by a lower level of hardened mud. A strong fetid smell, probably that of petroleum, proceeded from the island, and extended for a considerable ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... around the vent. Mercurial ointment may be applied to the margin of the vent. Neither of them should be used for destroying lice on young chicks. Mercurial ointment should be used very carefully because of its poisonous effect. Lard may be used for destroying lice on young chicks. Crude petroleum may be sprayed among the feathers by a hand-sprayer, while the fowls are suspended by ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.

... Eiffel Tower and return to the starting point within thirty minutes, the distance of such flight being about nine miles. Dumont won the prize though he was some forty seconds over time. The length of his dirigible on this occasion was 108 feet, the diameter 19-1/2 feet. It had a 4-cylinder petroleum motor weighing 216 lbs., which generated 20 horse power. The screw was 13 feet in diameter and made three hundred ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... of education and private means; he belonged to a much higher profession, in fact he was a "jogger" travelling about from place to place—"globetrotting" from capital city to watering-place—all over the world in the exercise of his function. I had wondered if his accent was American (petroleum-American), or German, or Italian, or Russian, or what. Now I wondered no longer, for the jogger is cosmopolitan. When he had exhausted his lozenge he told me how many times the screw of the steamer revolved while carrying him across the Pacific ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies

... about fuel, sir," he went on, as Mr. Hartley moved away, "Hi'll say that 'ot air engines wouldn't be no good wotever on these 'ere craft. Gasoline is what we use, mostly, for our engines, sir, though some of the biggest use petroleum." ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock

... brought a tray containing some broiled mushrooms, a loaf of mineral bread and some petroleum-butter. The butter Betsy could not eat, but the bread was ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... the people were engaged chiefly in fishing, commerce, and manufacturing; in the Middle states in farming, commerce, manufacturing, and mining. To the great coal and iron mines of Pennsylvania were (1859) added the oil fields. That petroleum existed in that state had long been known; but it was not till Drake drilled a well near Titusville (in northwestern Pennsylvania) and struck oil that enough was obtained to make it marketable. Down the Ohio there was a great trade in bituminous coal, and the union of the coal, ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... given by a "lamp," a kind of Chinese lantern on a lacquer stand, the light being given by a rush candle. I am sorry, however, to say that these in some respects artistic lanterns are being generally replaced by hideous petroleum or kerosene lamps, not only ugly but a constant source of danger in these ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... the moon, were terrified on the cedar tops by the wavering lights of the petroleum as it burned in the porphyry vases. They uttered screams which afforded mirth to ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert

... pervades the waters in autumn, which agglutinates the sand blown over it by the winds, and floats it about in patches. I have never been able to discover the cause of this; perhaps, it is petroleum, or the sand is magnetic iron. Singular currents and differently coloured streams also appear, as on the ocean; but, as all the lakes have a fall, no weed gathers, ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle

... instance, a given weight of coal or petroleum stores a given quantity of energy which may be ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber

... magnates—William H. Vanderbilt, for instance—were taken in the fold of the Standard Oil Company by being made stockholders. With these secret rates the Standard Oil Company was enabled to crush out absolutely a myriad of competitors and middlemen, and control the petroleum trade not only of the United States but of almost the entire world. Such fabulous profits accumulated that in the course of forty years, after one unending career of industrial construction on the one hand, and crime ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... lasso the peak of a mountain. Then we have the flinging from the turrets of a strange and frightful fiery rain, as if water itself had caught fire. It was afterwards known as the Greek Fire and was probably petroleum; but to those who had never seen (or felt) it before it may well have seemed the flaming oil of witchcraft. Then Godfrey and the wiser of the warriors set about to build wooden siege-towers and found they had next to no wood to build them. There was scarcely anything in that rocky waste but the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... and therefore of Lucas County, was David R. Locke, who was born in New York state, but lived in Ohio from his fifth year onward. He was a printer and an editor, and after the war, he suddenly won national fame as the author of the Petroleum V. Naseby letters. These were satires of the old proslavery spirit which retarded the reconstruction of the South and harried the freedmen by mobs and lynchings. Their humor gave Locke a place in our literature which no ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells

... found, however, that there were plenty of other things to do, and we never used it; on the other hand, the windmill proved extremely serviceable. For illumination when we might not have enough power to produce electric light, we took with us about 16 tons of petroleum, which was also intended for cooking purposes and for warming the cabins. This petroleum, as well as 20 tons of common kerosene, [15] intended to be used along with coal in the boiler, was stored in massive iron tanks, eight of which were in the hold, and one on deck. In all, the ship had eight ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... day the enemy made repeated efforts to send fire rafts down the river from above Kemmendine. These rafts were constructed of bamboos, upon which were placed great numbers of earthenware pots, filled with petroleum. These rafts were skilfully constructed, and made in sections so that, when they drifted against an anchor chain, they would divide—those on each side swinging round, so as to envelop the ship ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... known concerning the mineral wealth of the islands. It is stated that there are deposits of coal, petroleum, iron, lead, sulphur, copper and gold in the various islands, but little or nothing has been done to develop them. A few concessions have been granted for working mines, but the output is not large. The gold is reported ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... anything more piercing than the grim cold of that journey. We crawled at a foot's pace through changeful snow-drifts. The road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness. My little girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white covering of snow above her. Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen masses to our ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... we will go with Lula to the North River pier, where her great steamer lies, and see what she intends to carry to Liverpool. Bales of cotton, barrels of flour, of beef, and of petroleum. All very good, so good-by to her. In a few weeks we will ...
— The Stories Mother Nature Told Her Children • Jane Andrews

... at last reached the cantine van near the middle of the train, he found it already besieged. There was here a petroleum stove, with a small supply of cooking utensils. The broth prepared from concentrated meat-extract was being warmed in wrought-iron pans, whilst the preserved milk in tins was diluted and supplied as occasion required. There were some other provisions, such as biscuits, fruit, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... oil in the filling from colouring them dark. Next, cover the body of the work with a wood filling composed of whiting and plaster of Paris, mixed with japan, benzine, and raw linseed-oil, or the lubricating oil made from petroleum; the whole covered with umber, to which, in the rare cases when a reddish shade is wanted, Venetian red is also added. This filling is then rubbed off with cloths, and by this process tends to close up the grain of the wood and produce an even ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead

... Burleigh used to say, with Aristotle and the Emperor Frederick II. to back him, that 'nobility was ancient riches,' whence also the Spanish were wont to call their nobles ricos hombres, and the aristocracy of America are the descendants of those who first became wealthy, by whatever means. Petroleum will in this wise be the source of much good blood among our posterity. The aristocracy of the South, such as it is, has the shallowest of all foundations, for it is only skin-deep,—the most odious of all, for, while affecting to despise trade, it traces its origin ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Petroleum is not a bad thing in water where sulphate of lime prevails; but you should use only the refined, as crude oil sometimes helps to form a very injurious scale. Carbonate of soda and corn-starch have been recommended as a scale preventative, and ...
— Rough and Tumble Engineering • James H. Maggard

... large quantities), nitrate of potassium, yellow, rose-coloured, and opalescent quartz, sulphate of iron, sulphate of magnesia, potash, kaolin. Coal and lignite of poor quality have been discovered in some regions, and also petroleum, ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... flowed onward, sluggish and monotonous. Winter had come again, with its commercial stagnation, and the Iceland trade was ruined. The shoemakers did no more work by artificial light; there was so little to do that it would not repay the cost of the petroleum; so the hanging lamp was put on one side and the old tin lamp was brought out again. That was good enough to sit round and to gossip by. The neighbors would come into the twilight of the workshop; if Master Andres was not there, they would slip out again, or they would sit idly there ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... stirred, although she rapped loudly. In considerable perplexity she descended the stairs again. Mother Fetu was doubtless in the rooms on the first floor, where, however, Helene dared not show herself. She remained five minutes in the entry, which was lighted by a petroleum lamp. Then again she ascended the stairs hesitatingly, gazing at each door, and was on the point of going away, when the old woman leaned ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... found in a very weak condition, and covered with blood. One of my mules, on which a leaf-nosed bat made a nightly attack, was only saved by having his back rubbed with an ointment made of spirits of camphor, soap and petroleum. The blood-suckers have such an aversion to the smell of this ointment that on its application they ceased to approach the mule. These bats are very mischievous in the plantations of the forests, where beasts of burden ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi

... He was trying to get a drink and gave a shilling—it was false. The inspector will show it to you, sir. And another queer thing, Mr. Jennings, this man had some rags and a bottle of petroleum on him." ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume

... decade the business of the Pennsylvania was continually benefited by the industrial development and growth which marked the period. It was at this time that the Pittsburgh district took its permanent place as the great center of steel and iron manufacture. The discovery of petroleum in western Pennsylvania, creating an enormous new industry in itself, proved to be an event of far-reaching significance for the Pennsylvania Railroad. The extensive opening up of the soft coal sections ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody

... cottonwood, and the discovery of a very considerable quantity of cedar in the interior, have, however, effectually solved one phase of this problem; while for the production of steam science now offers petroleum as a practical substitute for wood and coal. But independently of this, the road has already reached the bituminous beds of the Black Hills, where it will probably find a plentiful supply for its necessities. Water also is obtained in sufficient ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various

... Betray her friend?—go to Winnington for help? But he was a magistrate. If such a plot were really on foot—and Lathrop was himself convinced that petroleum and explosives were already stored somewhere in the neighbourhood of the house—Winnington could only treat such a thing as a public servant, as a guardian of the law. Any appeal to him to let private interests—even her interests—interfere, ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... l. 353. Coal has probably all been sublimed more or less from the clay, with which it was at first formed in decomposing morasses; the petroleum seems to have been separated and condensed again in superior strata, and a still finer kind of oil, as naphtha, has probably had the same origin. Some of these liquid oils have again lost their more volatile parts, and become cannel-coal, asphaltum, jet, and amber, according ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... of the troupe were asleep, and the lights were out in all the little windows, and not a sound was to be heard, while the snow continued to fall in large flakes. So having put out the petroleum lamp, I opened the door, and taking the drunkard by the feet, as if he had been a bale of goods, I threw him out into ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... surfaces on this planet will sink, to be covered with slime and water, to rise again in the centuries to come, for the Father's love and solicitude will provide, as it has in the case of all His Celestial Creations, a bountiful supply of stored-up radiant energy, such as coal and petroleum, and other elements, for the comfort of those who will inhabit this giant among the worlds of this system ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon

... manufacturing and other purposes has doubled about once in ten years, and the steady pace kept by different lines of development shows how closely they are related. Our power, our forest cut, the use of our iron and other minerals, our coal and petroleum, the railroad earnings, freight and passenger traffic, and our agricultural products all double themselves every ten years. This means that in ten years we shall require twice as much power as now, but will have far less coal to use. This raises the question,—have we available water-power ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... feather is well known, and need not be described again. But I may mention that in this country some have found the use of an ointment, first suggested by Mr. Lewis Wright, I believe, most valuable. This is made of mercurial ointment, two parts; pure lard, two parts; flour of sulphur, one part; crude petroleum, one part—and when mixed together is applied to the heads of the chicks as soon as they are dry after hatching. Many have testified that they have never found this to fail as a preventive, and if the success is to be attributed to the ointment, it would seem as if the insects are driven ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various

... countries. Not only has the German consumption of provisions and luxuries increased in an unusual degree, also that of meat, tropical fruits, sugar, tobacco and colonial products, but above all else that of raw materials, such as coal, iron, copper and other metals, cotton, petroleum, wood, skins, &c. Germany furnishes a market for articles of manufacture also, for American machinery, English wool, French luxury articles, &c. One is absolutely wrong in the belief that the competition of German industry in the world market has been detrimental ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... the hydrocarbons. There are two chief sources of the hydrocarbons, namely, (1) crude petroleum ...
— An Elementary Study of Chemistry • William McPherson

... was whirling along to Limeton, wondering what Tom's relations would be like, and whether they were like him— unpolished diamonds. Could he think so much of them if they were not very nice? And although the people she knew from Limeton except Tom, had been suggestive of smoke and petroleum to her, they surely would ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... face to appear in a mass of flame make use of the following: mix together thoroughly petroleum, lard, mutton tallow and quick lime. Distill this over a charcoal fire, and the liquid which results can be burned on the face ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... a report that out-of-town hands were coming to replace the strikers acted on the public mind like petroleum on fire. A large body of workmen assembled near the railway station,—to welcome them. There was another rumor which caused the marble workers to stare at each other aghast. It was to the effect that Mr. Slocum, having long meditated retiring from business, ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... the small white population and insufficient means of communication, which is nearly all by river, the natural resources of Dutch Borneo are still in the infancy of development. The petroleum industry has reached important proportions, but development of the mineral wealth has hardly begun. In 1917 a government commission, having the location of iron and gold especially in view, was sent to explore ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... Grand Rapids, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburg, in which latter city I was to meet an American friend of mine who was to help me to realise one of my dreams—at least, I fancied so. In partnership with his brother, my friend was the owner of large steel works and several petroleum wells. I had known him in Paris, and had met him again at New York, where he offered to conduct me to Buffalo, so that I could visit or rather he could initiate me into the Falls of Niagara, for which he entertained a lover's passion. ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... supplement liquefy petroleum rarefy skeleton telescope tragedy gayety lineal renegade secretary deprecate execrate implement maleable promenade recreate stupefy tenement vegetate academy ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... the most recent of these is that the cities of the plain, having been built with blocks of bituminous rock, were set on fire by lightning, a contemporary earthquake helping on the work. Still another is that accumulations of petroleum and inflammable gas escaped through a fissure, took fire, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... occasions," says Mr. Brooks, "I have held in my hand a printed slip while he was repeating its contents to somebody else, and the precision with which he delivered every word was marvellous." He was fond of the writings of "Orpheus C. Kerr" and "Petroleum V. Nasby," who were famous humorists at the time of the Civil War; and he amused himself and others in the darkest hours by quoting passages from these now forgotten authors. Nasby's letter from "Wingert's Corners, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... valuable productions, and particularly on account of its abounding in gold. Besides gold, it produces white sandal-wood, benzoin, camphor, pepper, ginger, cinnamon[153], abundance of silk, and abounds in fish and cattle. It has in one part a spring of petroleum or rock oil, and one of its mountains is a volcano. The original natives of the island are pagans; but the Moors who came there first as merchants, have possessed themselves of the island as lords ever since the year 1400. Among the inland tribes ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... and Spanish-scalping sentences rolled from his lips like crude petroleum from a five-inch pipe. Each inflammatory oratorical flight was dramatically climaxed with the words, "For it is sweet to die ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves

... Again," says a contemporary, and we were just going to congratulate the authorities when we discovered that it referred to a Petroleum Company. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various

... a listing of barge carriers, bulk cargo ships, cargo ships, chemical tankers, combination bulk carriers, combination ore/oil carriers, container ships, liquefied gas tankers, livestock carriers, multifunctional large-load carriers, petroleum tankers, passenger ships, passenger/cargo ships, railcar carriers, refrigerated cargo ships, roll-on/roll-off cargo ships, short-sea passenger ships, specialized tankers, and ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... twentieth century. This last was a sumptuously fitted up carriage having a seat behind for servants, accommodating eight persons in all. There was also a huge box for luggage. It would be interesting to know how much petroleum, electricity, or alcohol such a vehicle would consume in a day. The manufacture of motor cars must be a very flourishing business in France, next, I should say, to that of bicycles. Of these also there was a goodly supply in the entrance hall of the inn, ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Another method is to glue paper on the ends. In some cases abroad paper is glued on to all the surfaces of valuable exotic balks. Other substances sometimes employed for the purpose of sealing the wood are grease, carbolineum, wax, clay, petroleum, linseed oil, tar, and soluble glass. In place of solid beams, built-up material is often preferable, as the disastrous results of season checks are thereby largely ...
— The Mechanical Properties of Wood • Samuel J. Record

... of quicksilver, antimony, graphite, mica, tin, nickel, platinum, and many minerals less well known, as well as our petroleum, natural gas, copper, gold, silver, lead, zinc, and phosphate rock will be almost exhausted well within the present century unless large new deposits ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... subject in England for the moment is the horrible accident to the Irish mail-train. It is now supposed that the petroleum (known to be a powerful anaesthetic) rendered the unfortunate people who were burnt almost instantly insensible to any sensation. My escape in the Staplehurst accident of three years ago is not to be obliterated from my nervous system. To this hour I have sudden vague rushes of terror, even when ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens

... indications of former volcanic activity, and along the coast are earthy cones covered with green-sward, from which issue springs of muddy water emitting bubbles of gas. Copper, iron and silver ore have been discovered; but the island is chiefly noted for its petroleum wells, the oil derived from which is of excellent quality, and is extensively used in the composition of paint, as it preserves wood from the ravages of insects. Timber is not abundant, but the gamboge tree and the wood-oil ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... towards the west, low and flat, like the sides of an enormous canal. The sea-reach of the Thames is straight, and, once Sheerness is left behind, its banks seem very uninhabited, except for the cluster of houses which is Southend, or here and there a lonely wooden jetty where petroleum ships discharge their dangerous cargoes, and the oil-storage tanks, low and round with slightly-domed roofs, peep over the edge of the fore-shore, as it were a village of Central African huts imitated in iron. Bordered ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad



Words linked to "Petroleum" :   carbon, atomic number 6, resid, fossil fuel, residual oil, c



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