essential oil

noun

any of a class of volatile oils obtained from plants, possessing the odor and other characteristic properties of the plant, used chiefly in the manufacture of perfumes, flavors, and pharmaceuticals.

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Origin:
1665–75

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Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
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Essential oil is always a great word to know.

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an arrangement of five objects, as trees, in a square or rectangle, one at each corner and one in the middle.

a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare.

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Collins

World English Dictionary

essential oil

—n
	Compare fixed oil See also oleoresin any of various volatile organic oils present in plants, usually containing terpenes and esters and having the odour or flavour of the plant from which they are extracted: used in flavouring and perfumery

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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American Heritage

Medical Dictionary

essential oil n.
A volatile oil, usually having the characteristic odor or flavor of the plant from which it is obtained, used to make perfumes and flavorings.

The American Heritage® Stedman's Medical Dictionary
Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company.
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American Heritage

Science Dictionary

essential oil

(ĭ-sěn'shəl) Pronunciation Key
Any of various volatile liquids, such as rose oil or lavender oil, that have a characteristic odor and are produced by plants. Essential oils are composed primarily of terpenes and of lesser quantities of alcohols, aldehydes, esters, phenols, and other compounds that impart particular odors or flavors. They are used to make perfumes, soaps, flavorings, and other products.

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"The learned professors have been at considerable pains in their attempts to make a distinction between tools and implements on the one hand, and machinery on the other. Nor have they arrived much of anywhere. The one is continually shading into the other. Here is an ordinary shovel used by a day labourer in a ditch; here is the same shovel with a somewhat thicker handle, containing a pneumatic attachment which is said to improve its digging power; here is a very much larger shovel with curved ends and steel teeth, hitched to an arm that is hitched to a steam engine, which can gobble up a cartload of dirt at one mouthful. Where does the tool stop and the machine begin? A grindstone is widely held to be a primitive tool; a turret lathe is widely held to be a machine. Both spin around. What is the essential difference? The employment of nonhuman power, steam, oil, gas, has been defined as the difference. Well and good. Then everything worked by human hands and legs is a tool only, and bicycles, typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, foot lathes, clocks, hand-pumps—are not machines. Which is absurd. And what is one to do with treadmills for grinding corn, whose motive power is said by some to be the donkey, and by some the carrot in front of his nose?"

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