Oil is a liquid with varying degrees of viscosity depending on temperature. Oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic and lipophilic. Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturated lipids that are liquid at room temperature.
Diverse oils are produced by plants, animals, and other organisms. Lipid is the scientific term for the fats, steroids, and phospholipids that are soluble in organic solvents. Another large class of plant oils are tall oils, mixtures of fats and rosins that are extracted from trees and used mainly as solvent and fuel. In addition to modern animal-derived oils (e.g. tallow), whale oil was once widely used.
From the perspective of commercial applications, fats are broadly significant because they are precursors to soaps and are a component of many foods, e.g. cooking oils. Drying oils, consisting of highly unsaturated fats, are key components of some paints and lacquers.
Several sources of "petroleum-derived" oils exist including distillates from crude oil and shale oil. Major uses of these oils include fuels (e.g. heating oil) and hydraulic fluids.
Additionally, synthetic oils, mainly used as lubricants are produced by chemical processing of petrochemicals.
Petroleum-based oils originate from ancient fossilized organic materials, such as zooplankton and algae, which geochemical processes convert into oil.
First usage in a form resembling the modern is in Anglo-Norman before (a)1300 in Land of Cokaygne in Middle English from Old French oile as a consequence of influence of Edward the Confessor (1042–1066) and after the killing of King Harold on 14 October 1066 after the 1066 invasion from Normandy, the earliest extant source a translation from Latin during the 12th or 13th century (Marbode Lapidaire) from Classical Latin oleum, (the earliest extant source being: Plautus, Poenulus) which in turn comes from the Greek ἔλαιον (elaion), "olive oil, oil" and that from ἐλαία (elaia), "olive tree", "olive fruit". "Olive oil" in Mycenaean Greek (transliteration) is e-rai-wo.
Oil has been used throughout history as a religious medium. It is often considered a spiritually purifying agent and is used for anointing purposes. As a particular example, holy anointing oil has been an important ritual liquid for Judaism and Christianity.
in W. Heuser, Kildare-Gedichte (1904)
Anglo-Norman oile < classical Latin
Apocalypse of St Paul; see M. R. James, trans., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), p. 538)Archived 9 August 2024 at the Wayback Machine
No Western mineralogical lapidaries are known to have been written after the seventh century, when Isodore of Seville compiled his Etymologiae, until Marbode, bishop of Rennes, between 1067 and 1101, wrote his Latin poem de lapidibus" "six Old French verse translations made directly from the text are known : that called the First French Version" "the discovery of strong evidence that the version called by Pannier Le Premier lapidaire francaise, to which we refer as The First French Version of Marbode's Lapidary, was written before 1150. – of the earlier period there survive scarcely any genuine continental lapidaries in the vernacular except the two translations of Marbode known as the Lapidaire de Modene and the Lapidaire de Berne" "A. M.S. Paris Bibl. Nat. lat. 14470 – is the oldest MS containing the First French Version – The writing belongs to the latter half of the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth" " Meyer showed conclusively MS. A. was not written in England – our investigations have brought to light strong evidence that it became the basis of an Anglo-Norman prose version about 1150 – The language is that which in the first half of the twelfth century served as a common literary medium in the Norman dominions on both sides of the Channel – uile (usually oile 265-66
The time is more or less the present (i.e. circa 200 B.C.)
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