gasoline
fuel for engines
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
US GASOLINE Demand Declined Last Week, MasterCard Says
(BusinessWeek magazine)
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My daughter Lila loves the smell of GASOLINE - she always says, 'Mummy, keep the door open,' when I'm filling up the car. I've heard it is one of the most preferred scents in the world - maybe that's something to study for my next fragrance!
- British super model Kate Moss
(BusinessWeek magazine)
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My daughter Lila loves the smell of GASOLINE - she always says, 'Mummy, keep the door open,' when I'm filling up the car. I've heard it is one of the most preferred scents in the world - maybe that's something to study for my next fragrance!
- British super model Kate Moss
Did you
know?
gasoline (North American for petrol)
noun
- a light fuel oil that is obtained by distilling petroleum and used in internal-combustion engines
(Oxford English Dictionaries)
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At first glance the American word for petrol - gasoline - would appear to derive from the word "gas," although gasoline is a liquid. Research by the Oxford English Dictionary has shed new light on a different theory however.
By 1850 gas lighting was common in the cities for the rich, but elsewhere there were only candles and oil lamps and darkness. The oil came from whales but there was not enough supply to meet demand.
Significant crude oil production did not begin until 1859 when oil was struck in Pennsylvania. John Cassell, publisher and coffee merchant, was soon importing the new fuel to London. Thinking that he needed a name for it, he presumably was inspired by his own, so he called it "cazeline."
Cassell was soon supplying shops across England and Ireland. Business boomed. Then Cassell discovered a shopkeeper in Dublin, Samuel Boyd, selling counterfeit cazeline and wrote to him to ask him to stop. Boyd did not reply but instead went through his stock, changing with a single dash of his pen, every 'C’ into a 'G’: gazeline was born.
Cassell took Boyd to court, which ruled in his favour, meaning Boyd had to stop using the term "gazeline." But the use of "cazeline" never took off, while "gazeline" flourished. Gazeline eventually evolved to gasolene and finally gasoline, the first use of which is found in an 1864 American Act of Congress which declared a tax on the oil. Thus we can thank an amateur Irish counterfeiter for coming up with the name of one of the world's most important commodities.
(adapted from Oxford English Dictionaries)
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SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"My American colleagues complain about gasoline prices, but they pay much less than we do in Europe."
noun
- a light fuel oil that is obtained by distilling petroleum and used in internal-combustion engines
(Oxford English Dictionaries)
---
At first glance the American word for petrol - gasoline - would appear to derive from the word "gas," although gasoline is a liquid. Research by the Oxford English Dictionary has shed new light on a different theory however.
By 1850 gas lighting was common in the cities for the rich, but elsewhere there were only candles and oil lamps and darkness. The oil came from whales but there was not enough supply to meet demand.
Significant crude oil production did not begin until 1859 when oil was struck in Pennsylvania. John Cassell, publisher and coffee merchant, was soon importing the new fuel to London. Thinking that he needed a name for it, he presumably was inspired by his own, so he called it "cazeline."
Cassell was soon supplying shops across England and Ireland. Business boomed. Then Cassell discovered a shopkeeper in Dublin, Samuel Boyd, selling counterfeit cazeline and wrote to him to ask him to stop. Boyd did not reply but instead went through his stock, changing with a single dash of his pen, every 'C’ into a 'G’: gazeline was born.
Cassell took Boyd to court, which ruled in his favour, meaning Boyd had to stop using the term "gazeline." But the use of "cazeline" never took off, while "gazeline" flourished. Gazeline eventually evolved to gasolene and finally gasoline, the first use of which is found in an 1864 American Act of Congress which declared a tax on the oil. Thus we can thank an amateur Irish counterfeiter for coming up with the name of one of the world's most important commodities.
(adapted from Oxford English Dictionaries)
---
SMUGGLE OWAD into today's conversation
"My American colleagues complain about gasoline prices, but they pay much less than we do in Europe."
