noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A petroleum-based thin and colourless fuel oil. Ireland, UK, countable, uncountable

   "She poured paraffin on the dry floors and on the pandanus-mats, and then she set fire."

2. 2
   (British usage) kerosine wordnet
3. 3
   Any member of the alkane hydrocarbons. countable, uncountable
4. 4
   a series of non-aromatic saturated hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH(2n+2) wordnet
5. 5
   Paraffin wax. countable, uncountable

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6. 6
   from crude petroleum; used for candles and for preservative or waterproof coatings wordnet

Verb

1. 1
   To impregnate or treat with paraffin.
2. 2
   To embed in paraffin wax.

Synonyms

All synonyms

alcoholalkanealkane seriesavgasbenzinebriquette

Example

More examples

"We'll buy some paraffin for them."

Etymology

From Latin paraffinum, from parum (too little) + affinis (related, affinity). Therefore low affinity or being chemically neutral.

Related phrases

liquid paraffinparaffin oilparaffin paperparaffin scaleparaffin testsoft paraffinparaffin wax

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.