oil

• oyl (obsolete)

• enPR: oil, IPA^(key): /ɔɪ(ə)l/, [ɔɪ(ə)ɫ]
• (Southern American English) IPA^(key): /ɔl/

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• Homophone: Oi'll
• Rhymes: -ɔɪl

From Middle English oyle, 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”). Compare Proto-Slavic *lojь. More at olive. Doublet of oleum. Supplanted Middle English ele (“oil”), from Old English ele (“oil”), also from Latin.

oil (countable and uncountable, plural oils)

1. Liquid fat.
2. Petroleum-based liquid used as fuel or lubricant.
3. Petroleum.
   • 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.

4. (countable) 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.

5. (painting) Oil paint.

   I prefer to paint in oil

6. (attributive) Containing oil, conveying oil; intended for or capable of containing oil.

   oil barrel; oil pipe

   • 1884, Trade News, “A one-wheel Nantucket vehicle”, in The Automotive Manufacturer‎, page 372:

     Such a vehicle is made by taking any old barrel (usually an oil barrel, but the one selected for our sketch was one that once contained Valentine’s varnish) and through each head of the barrel an inch hole is bored, and an iron bar is driven through, leaving the ends projecting about eight inches.

From Middle English oilen, oylen, from the noun (see above).

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

1. (transitive) To lubricate with oil.
   • 1900 May 17, L[yman] Frank Baum, chapter 23, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago, Ill., New York, N.Y.: Geo[rge] M. Hill Co., →OCLC:

     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: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

     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.

• ILO, LOI, Loi, Oli

• IPA^(key): /ɛlʲ/, /ɪlʲ/

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

oil f (genitive singular oile)

1. (literary) disgrace, reproach; act of reproaching
2. (literary) blemish, defect

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

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

1. (transitive) nourish, rear, foster

   Proverb: Gach dalta mar a oiltear. ― Every fosterling as it is reared.

2. (transitive) train, educate

   lámh oilte ― practised hand

oil f (genitive singular oileach, nominative plural oileacha)

1. Alternative form of ail (“stone, rock”)

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

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

• Ó Dónaill, Niall (1977) “oil”, in Foclóir Gaeilge–Béarla, Dublin: An Gúm, →ISBN
• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “2 ail (‘disgrace, reproach’)”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
• G. Toner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, S. Arbuthnot, D. Wodtko, M.-L. Theuerkauf, editors (2019), “1 ailid (‘nourish, foster’”, in eDIL: Electronic Dictionary of the Irish Language
• Finck, F. N. (1899) Die araner mundart (in German), volume II, Marburg: Elwert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, page 89

oil

1. Alternative form of oyle

From o +‎ il, possibly from:

• Vulgar Latin *hoc ille, from Latin hoc + ille (“this [is what] he [said]”),[1] akin to o je, o tu, o nos, o vos, all ‘this’ constructed with other personal pronouns;[2][3]
• hoc illud (“this is it, lit. this that”).

In any case, an elliptical phrase of response, by semantic erosion/grammaticalization possibly calqued on Gaulish: compare Portuguese and Spanish isso and eso (“yes, yeah”, literally “this”), Celtic languages such as Old Irish tó (“yes”), Welsh do (“indeed”), from *tod (“this, that”).[4]

Compare with Old French o, ou, oc, ec, euc, uoc, Old Occitan oc (Occitan òc), all from the simple Latin hoc.

• oïl (almost always used by scholars to disambiguate with other meanings)

• IPA^(key): /uˈil/

oil

1. yes

oil

1. yes
   • c. 1170, Chrétien de Troyes, Érec et Énide:

     "Oïl, mout m'an sovient il bien.
     Seneschaus, savez vos an rien?

     Yes, I remember it well
     Seneschal, do you know anything about it?

• French: oui, voui; ouais
  • → English: oui
  • Maori: Wīwī (“France”)
• Norman: oui (Guernsey)

See ueil.

• IPA^(key): /ˈɔ(i̯)ʎ/

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

1. Alternative form of ueil
   • 1260–1267, Brunetto Latini, “De tous Faucons [On all falcons]” (chapter 150), Book 5, in Livres dou Tresor [Book of Treasures]; republished as Polycarpe Chabaille, compiler, Li livres dou tresor par Brunetto Latini‎, Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1863, page 203:

     La sisisme ligne est sourpoins. Cist est molt grans, et resemble aigle blanche, mais des oilz et des eles et dou bec est il semblables au girfaut

     The sixth kind [of falcon] is the saker. It is very large, and resembles the white eagle; but in the eyes, and in the wings, and in the beak, it is similar to the gyrfalcon

oil

1. water
2. sap

• Blust's Austronesian Comparative Dictionary