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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








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"Paraffine" Quotes from Famous Books



... work to find what was saved, and what was lost. We were surprised to find that all our small films and plates had escaped a soaking. Protected in tin and cardboard boxes, wrapped with adhesive tape, and covered with a coating of paraffine melted and poured over them, they had turned the water in nearly every instance. The motion-picture film was not so fortunate. The paraffine had worn off the tin boxes in spots, the water soaked through ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... 81 is designed for heating with a large paraffin or petrol blow-lamp. It has considerably greater water capacity, heating surface—the furnace being entirely enclosed—and water surface than the boiler just described. The last at high-water level is about 60, and at ...
— Things To Make • Archibald Williams

... o'clock—the hour agreed upon— had gathered to a thick grey consistency. If the dock were policed at this hour, no police, save by the veriest accident, could have detected the children crouching with 'Dolph behind a breastwork of paraffin-casks, and waiting for Bill's signal—the first two or three bars of The Blue Bells of Scotland ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... have taken some time, as my Eyes have not been in good trim of late, whether from the Snow on the Ground, and the murky Air all about one, or because of the Eyes themselves being two years older than when they got hurt by Paraffin. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald

... to introduce us to the late Mr. Charles Pease, as done in paraffin, with creped hair and bright, shiny glass eyes. Mr. Pease was undoubtedly England's most fashionable murderer of the past century and his name is imperishably enshrined in the British affections. The guide spoke of his life and works with deep and sincere feeling. He also ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... was Natalya Andreyevna Velikosvyetsky, and the godfather Pavel Ivanitch Bezsonnitsin. . . . I . . . I believe, Dashenka, I am dying. And the baby has been christened Olimpiada, in honour of their kind patroness. . . . I . . . I have just drunk paraffin, Dashenka!" ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... and industry, he never could have produced for himself. Modern artificial light provides an example. Those home-made rushlights eulogized by Gilbert White and by Cobbett may have been well enough in their way, but cheap lamps and cheap paraffin have given the villagers their winter evenings. At a cost of a few halfpence earned in the course of the day's work a cottage family may prolong their winter day as far into the night as they please; and that, without feeling that they are ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... men only going forward slowly. We soon discovered the cause. The wooden bridge over the Meduna river was on fire, pouring forth clouds of smoke. The Austrians had been here only four hours before and had blown up two spans as they retreated and soaked the rest with paraffin and set it alight. The bridge was effectually destroyed. Italian Cavalry, we heard, had gone through the water in pursuit, and likewise some British Infantry patrols, swimming and wading and making use of various ingenious, improvised devices. But the Austrian had a good three hours start, ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... expressly prepared for the purpose, and provided with reed hurdles to screen the plants from cutting winds. Where the assaults of mice are to be apprehended, it is an excellent plan to soak the seed in paraffin oil for twenty minutes, and then, having sown in drills only one inch deep, heap over the drill three inches of fine sand. If this cannot be done, sow in drills fully two inches deep, for shallow sowing will not promote earliness, but it is likely to promote weakness of the plant. It ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons

... men, their faces streaming with tears of sweat, put down on the ground some large tins, a paraffin can, two canvas buckets, and a file of loaves, skewered on a stick. Leaning against the wall of the trench, they mop their faces with their handkerchiefs or sleeves. And I see Cocon go up to Pepere with a smile, ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... Miss Grey said simply: "It was only that my lamp has gone out; you know there isn't any gas on my floor, and I remembered you had paraffin for your reading lamp.... I'm so afraid of the dark. I ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... covered with insects. One day an order was given that everybody should undress to be rubbed with paraffin. Some ladies who objected were undressed by force before our eyes, since men and women slept together, and the soldiers rubbed them ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek

... found its zenith in the drawing-room, but deteriorated again very rapidly afterwards. The dining-room, being midway between the kitchen and the drawing-room, was only a middling-looking apartment. They did not often have a fire there; a paraffin lamp stove stood in the fire-place, leering with its red eye as if it took a wicked satisfaction in its own smell. Before the fire-place, re-reading the already-known newspaper by the light of one gas jet, sat Johnny Gillat. Poor old Johnny, ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad

... opening in the bottom of small flower pots with stiff paper or fill with paraffin wax. Line the flower pot with stiff white paper to within an inch of the top. Fill with chocolate ice cream or any desired cream, but cover the top with chocolate ice cream or chocolate frosting as dark as possible, sprinkle grated ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain

... side, and was kneading a last batch of paste, while his apprentice was ringing a bell which hung over the iron cooking-stove to attract customers. There was an odor of rancid butter, spilled wine, and paraffin oil. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... you can't see her well? Wait a bit and I'll get a lantern. Can't have a naked candle here—things too valuable; no money could buy them again. My wife and I had another row about naked candles, or it may have been a paraffin lamp. You sit in that old prayer-stool and ...
— The Virgin of the Sun • H. R. Haggard

... went down,—went out with a click, some one declared,—and, as no twilight interposed between daylight and darkness in the country which Big Stone Hole ornamented, Herr Gustav lit his two paraffin-lamps. Neither boasted more than a one-inch wick, and, as their glasses were extremely smoky, the illumination was not brilliant; but it sufficed to show the flushed, angry faces of a couple of men standing in the centre of the room, with all the others clustered round, watching ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various

... then why do you ask me?" complained Janey with reason. The room looked more cheerful since Ursula had come home. The fire, no longer choked with cinders, burned clear and red. The lamp, though it was a cheap one, and burned paraffin oil, did not smell. The old curtains were nicely drawn, and the old covers smoothed over the chairs. All this did not make them look less old; but it made their antiquity natural and becoming. Johnnie, ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... tiny flame sprang up, and then there flared a candle—one of those trench candles made of rolled newspapers and paraffin. It illumined the ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson

... the least tired,' said Mary. 'I've got it all arranged. I'm going to the village at two o'clock for some paraffin. Nellie hasn't enough, and the walk will do ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling

... rheostat, also a delicate ammeter reading to .01 of an ampere. It consists of a wooden frame supporting a flat glass bulb with a long neck bent upward at an obtuse angle (Fig. 53). The bulb is filled with liquid paraffin, which rises in the open neck when expanded by heat. The neck also accommodates the thermometer. Two coils of manganin wire run in the paraffin at opposite sides of the bulb (outside the field of vision), coupled ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... light, cast by a small paraffin lamp set in a niche hollowed out of the whitewashed rock, made darkness visible in a tiny room with a rough earthen floor. A red calico curtain at the far end signified a second cave-room beyond. No one was visible, no one ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... Mrs. Anthony pitied the poor editors and reporters while Parliament was sitting. She saw them as rather silly, violent and desperate men, yet pathetic in their silliness, violence and desperation, snatching at divorces, and breach of promise cases, and fires in paraffin shops, as ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... back kitchen. She was suffering with some complaint. When they knocked at the door she was terrified for fear it was the landlord. The room was in a most filthy condition, never having been cleaned. She had a penny paraffin lamp which filled the room with smoke. The old woman was at times totally unable to do anything for herself. The Officers looked ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... could see the creatures sitting on the under side of leaves with their heads stretched out waiting to attack anything that went by. As wayfarers there could not have been numerous, I wondered what they had lived on for the last few thousand years. By the way, I found that paraffin, of which we had a small supply for our hand-lamps, rubbed over all exposed surfaces, was to some extent a protection against these blood-sucking worms and the gnats, although it did make one go about smelling like ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... of sad aspect occupies a commanding position midway along the street, but inspires the traveler not with cheer, but with lugubrious reflections upon the horrors of inebriety. The odors, unpleasantly mingled, of fried bacon and paraffin oil, are wafted to the wayfarer from the porches of ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer

... arrangements to make the ship comfortable during the dark months, the question of artificial light was as difficult as it was important. Paraffin had from the first been suggested as the most [Page 81] suitable illuminant, its main disadvantage being that it is not a desirable oil to carry in quantities in a ship. 'Our luckiest find,' Scott says, 'was perhaps the right sort of lamp in which ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... on one side a circular hole 1.23 mm. in diameter (i.e. a little less than the 1/20th of an inch); and the box was placed in front of a paraffin lamp and on another occasion in front of a window; and both times the seedlings were manifestly bent after a few ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin

... very first to neglect or otherwise maltreat them. She did not give them enough water, or left the door of her fern-ease open when she was cooking her dinner at the gas stove, or kept them too near the paraffin oil, or other like folly; and as for her temper, see what the gazelles did; as long as they did not know her "well," they could just manage to exist, but when they got to understand her real character, one ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... account, 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 testimony; and if you dropped the grease ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... public which 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 cannot help being false. They are vulgar writers ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... It presently seemed wise, to the brothers and sisters of the Baby, who was wanted by everyone, to hide in the hedge whenever they saw anyone coming, and thus they managed to prevent the Lamb from arousing the inconvenient affection of a milkman, a stone-breaker, and a man who drove a cart with a paraffin barrel at the back of it. They were nearly home when the worst thing of all happened. Turning a corner suddenly they came upon two vans, a tent, and a company of gipsies encamped by the side of the road. The vans were hung all round with wicker chairs and cradles, and flower-stands ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... bush Are facial assets to be prized, Denoting driving-power and push In men however undersized (Bear's grease or paraffin or both Will ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various

... in Fig. 3, and pressed against the soft part, while the tube is quickly rotated about its axis. If the flange is insufficient the operation may be repeated. The tool should always be warmed in the flame before use, and occasionally greased by touching it to a piece of wax or paraffin. After the flange is complete, the end must be heated again to the softening temperature and cooled slowly, to ...
— Laboratory Manual of Glass-Blowing • Francis C. Frary

... such a blob of a nose," she said ruefully. "There is mighty little to be done with a nose like mine unless I have paraffin injected under the skin right on top. Of course, I could make it up for the stage from the outside, but not for close inspection. Are my skirts too ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson

... extended to the vermin. When the lamp was extinguished, the bed was alive. I always marvelled at the phrase, "he took up his bed and walked," but if the bugs had been unanimous, they could have walked off with the bed without a miracle. Sleeping was impossible. I relighted the paraffin lamp, a retreat was evidently sounded, and the enemy retired. Presently an explosion took place—the lamp had gone wrong, and burst, fortunately without setting the place on fire. An advance was sounded, and the enemy came on, determined ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... then tested for omega-brommethylfurfural by 'sowing' with the most minute trace of the substance, as described above. It was then warmed on a water-oven, kept in a vacuum desiccator over solid paraffin, and the weight estimated. When necessary, the product was recrystallised from ether, and further identified by the tests mentioned. The following results ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... dark and she took the box while he held the paraffin soaked torch in its iron holder. He thought of warning her: "Look out for yourself." But before he had the time to finish the sentence the flare blazed up violently between them and he saw her throw herself back with an arm across her face. "Hallo," he exclaimed; only he could not stop a moment ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... trials were arranged with great care by Mr. Walker. An old boiler flue was placed vertically, and closed at top by means of a removable wooden cover, the interior space being about 72 cubic feet. A temporary gasometer had been arranged at a suitable distance by means of a paraffin cask having a capacity of 6 cubic feet suspended inside a larger cask, and by this means the boiler was charged with a highly explosive mixture of gas and air in the proportion of 1 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 620, November 19,1887 • Various

... which the human lot was cast, the duskiest corner of a shop pervaded not a little, in winter, by the poison of perpetual gas, and at all times by the presence of hams, cheese, dried fish, soap, varnish, paraffin and other solids and fluids that she came to know perfectly by their smells without consenting to know them ...
— In the Cage • Henry James

... glimpse of a desolate, empty passage beyond. On the threshold stood Karamaneh. She held in her hand a common tin oil lamp which smoked and flickered with every movement, filling the already none too cleanly air with an odour of burning paraffin. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer

... of mind and body, who can no more restrain the fury into which a trifling mishap throws them than a dog can restrain himself from snapping if he is suddenly and painfully pinched. People fling knives and lighted paraffin lamps at one another in a dispute over a dinner-table. Men who have suffered several long sentences of penal servitude for murderous assaults will, the very day after they are released, seize their wives and cast them under drays at an irritating word. We have not only people who cannot ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... remedied by making a large bag and filling it with hay. Then there were neither sheets, towels, nor table-clothes. This was irremediable, and I never missed the first or last. Candles were another loss, and we had only one paraffin lamp. I slept all night in spite of a gale which blew all Sunday and into Monday afternoon, threatening to lift the cabin from the ground, and actually removing part of the roof from the little room ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird



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