Diesel

How to spell diesel

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce diesel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does diesel mean?

1. nounA heavy oil-based fuel used in compression-ignition engines.
2. nounAn engine or vehicle powered by a compression-ignition motor.

Diesel in a sentence

• The van runs on diesel rather than petrol.

• The old diesel rattled loudly as it idled at the platform.

• The price of diesel rose sharply at the local garage.

• He prefers a diesel for towing the caravan because of its torque.

Where does diesel come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is unusual because it is an eponym: it comes straight from a person's surname. Rudolf Diesel was a German engineer who in the 1890s patented the compression-ignition engine that now bears his name, an engine that ignites fuel through heat from compressed air rather than a spark. His family name, Diesel, is an ordinary German surname, and once his engine became famous the inventor's name was attached both to the machine and to the heavy oil fuel it ran on. English adopted the word around the turn of the twentieth century, keeping the original German spelling intact. That preserved spelling is exactly the spelling trap, since the German ie sits in an order English speakers do not always expect and the s is pronounced like a z. Tragically, Rudolf Diesel disappeared from a ship in the English Channel in 1913, but his surname lives on in millions of vehicles.

How the word is built

• Diesel (surname of Rudolf Diesel, the inventor)
• used as a common noun