oil

Petroleum-based liquid used as fuel or lubricant.

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.

2013 August 3, “Yesterday’s fuel”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8847:

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.

1973, John Ulric Nef, Search for meaning: the autobiography of a nonconformist, page 89:

I prefer to paint in oil

oil barrel; oil pipe

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.

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

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

en-noun

oil (countable and uncountable, plural oils)

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

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.

1900 May 17, L[yman] Frank Baum, chapter 23, in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chicago, Ill.; New York, N.Y.: Geo[rge] M[elvin] Hill Co., →OCLC:

Platform faces in Holland are further back from the track than they are in Britain, and it is a common thing to see a driver standing quite comfortably between his engine and the platform while oiling the motion.

1955 February, E. J. Tyler and J. Quanjer, “The Steam Locomotive in Holland 1919-1954”, in Railway Magazine, page 131:

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.

1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 17, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:

(transitive) To grease with oil for cooking.

"Do you need a drink?" oils Robert Ryan to the disinterested Stanwyck in Clash By Night; "Let's say that's what I need," she sneers back.

1984 December 22, Michael Bronski, “Women Act Out on Film”, in Gay Community News, volume 12, number 23, page 10:

en-verb

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

oils (present singular third-person)
oiling (participle present)
oiled (participle past)
oiled (past)
oyl (alternative)

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