Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Paraffine   Listen
noun
Paraffine, Paraffin  n.  (Chem.) A white waxy substance, resembling spermaceti, tasteless and odorless, and obtained from coal tar, wood tar, petroleum, etc., by distillation. It is used in candles, as a sealing agent (such as in canning of preserves), as a waterproofing agent, as an illuminant and as a lubricant. It is very inert, not being acted upon by most of the strong chemical reagents. It was formerly regarded as a definite compound, but is now known to be a complex mixture of several higher hydrocarbons of the methane or marsh-gas series; hence, by extension, any substance, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, of the same chemical series; thus gasoline, coal gas and kerosene consist largely of paraffins. Note: In the present chemical usage this word is spelled paraffin, but in commerce it is commonly spelled paraffine.
Native paraffin. See Ozocerite.
Paraffin series. See Methane series, under Methane.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Paraffine" Quotes from Famous Books



... materials had been sacrificed. Deluged as they were continually by heavy seas, nothing but the most inflammable substances would burn. Hence, when their tar-barrels were exhausted, Stanley Hall and his assistants got hold of sheets, table-cloths, bedding, and garments, and saturated these with paraffine oil, of which, fortunately, there happened to be a large quantity on board. They now applied themselves with redoubled diligence to the construction and keeping alight of these flares, knowing well that the work ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... may be touched up with water-color. If they are pink, rouge may be used effectively. If the edges are much frayed, trim them slightly with the shears. Green leaves may be dipped in hot paraffine to restore their gloss, or pressed with a warm iron without paraffine. Even very imperfect flowers may be made to look well if veiled with maline ...
— Make Your Own Hats • Gene Allen Martin

... following a more efficient method: select perfect bunches, and dip the broken end of the stems in melted paraffine or sealing wax. Wrap separately in tissue paper, hang in a cool place, or ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg

... eats salt beef and horse-radish sauce with relish, and does not care for artichokes and asparagus. Put yourself at its point of view, imagine the grey, dreary courtyard, the educated ladies who look like cooks, the smell of paraffin, the scantiness of interests and tasks—and you will understand N. and his readers. He is colourless; that is partly because the life he describes lacks colour. He is false because bourgeois writers ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... yellow light of the paraffin lamp, and gazed in wonderment at Gentle Annie. He was a tattered and mournful object; his boots worn out, his trousers a marvel of patchwork, his coat a thing discoloured and torn, his hair and beard unshorn, himself a being ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... lard and smelt like lard—in fact, it looked better than real lard: too white and crinkly and tempting on top. And the next day the chemist came down to my office and told me that "Driven Snow" must have been driven through a candle factory, because it had picked up about twenty per cent. of paraffin ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... she had spent the whole day wondering whether the battle between Tishy and her mother had come off. She said so last thing of all to her mother as she decanted the melted paraffin of a bedroom candle whose wick, up to its neck therein, was unable to find a scope for its genius, and yielded only a spectral blue spark that went out directly if you carried it. Tilted over, it would lick in the end—this was Sally's ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... provisions we had brought from Catania and drink the wine we had bought at Mascalucia on the way. The discussion ended by our being received in a peasant's hut, where we spread a table for ourselves and the woman stood a low paraffin lamp in the middle of the cloth. This is a bad plan, the light dazzles one for seeing those sitting opposite and their shadows are thrown big and black on the wall and ceiling so that one cannot see the room, but I should say it was like Orlando's ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones

... contentedly in the intervals of coughing with the shining chestnuts, or ate his slice of the fine pear—the gift of a friend in Thame—which proved to be the "summat else" of promise. The curtains were close-drawn; the paraffin lamp flared on the table, and as the savoury smell of the hare and onions on the fire filled the kitchen, the whole family gathered round watching for the moment of eating. The fire played on the thin legs and pinched faces of the children; on the baby's cradle ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... goal was reached. His misgivings and tergiversations had so much delayed him by the way, that it was past midnight, and the train was already due. There were no other travellers on the platform, or in the little waiting-room where a paraffin-lamp with blackened chimney struggled feebly with the fog. It was not a cheery room, and he was glad to be called back from a contemplation of a roll of texts hanging on the wall, and a bottle of stale water on the table, to human things by the entry of a drowsy official ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... gun-cotton was safely fired in shells in small quantities, but when a sufficient quantity to fill the shell cavity was used, the gun burst. Some few years ago it was found that if the gun-cotton was either wet or soaked in paraffin, it could be fired with safety from powder guns in ordinary shells, provided the quantity was small in proportion to the total weight of the shell—say five or six per cent. But a new difficulty arises from the fact that ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various

... young girls should be occupied only when the necessary protective measures (ventilation, etc.) are properly provided for: The manufacture of paper matting, china ware, lead pencils, shot lead, etherial oils, alum, blood-lye, bromium, chinin, soda, paraffin and ultramarine (poisonous) colored paper, wafers that contain poison, metachromotypes, phosphorous matches, Schweinfurt green and artificial flowers. Also in the cutting and sorting of rags, sorting and coloring of tobacco leaf, cotton beating, wool and silk carding, cleaning of bed feathers, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... the "Bosch." The most usual way is to cut the wire, but where sentries are numerous the undertaking is both difficult and dangerous. It is most natural to try stunts of the sort under cover of darkness. At this camp, however, the paraffin arc lamps were particularly brilliant, and when star-gazing on several occasions I have seen rats and mice scuttle across the white sand some distance away. Though storms often raged during the day, the wind almost invariably blew itself ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... business be "as usual" when in Paris there are about 1800 of these small workshops where a woman dips Bengal Fire and grenades into a bath of paraffin! ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch

... us? If there isn't, there ought to be. For what are we from week-end to week-end but grimy male and female Troglodytes, eating minced horse and fried locusts in underground burrows by the light of paraffin lamps! Another peach.... Thanks. Can't you see those dear things, the Sisters, gathering them by lantern-light, and being shelled by Brounckers' German gunners. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com