Petrol

How to spell petrol

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce petrol

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does petrol mean?

1. nounA refined liquid fuel, distilled from petroleum, used to power motor vehicles.

Petrol in a sentence

• The car ran out of petrol on the motorway.

• The price of petrol rose sharply over the summer.

Where does petrol come from?

Language of origin: Greek

Petrol is a shortened form of petroleum, the refined fuel taking its name from the crude oil it is distilled from. Petroleum itself comes from Medieval Latin petroleum, a compound of the Greek petra, meaning 'rock', and the Latin oleum, meaning 'oil', so the word literally describes 'rock oil', the oily substance that seeps up through stone. The clipped form 'petrol' was popularised in the late nineteenth century, partly as a trade name, to label the volatile spirit used to drive the new internal combustion engines. The same petra root sits inside familiar words like 'petrify' (to turn to stone) and the name Peter, while oleum survives in 'oil' itself. Remembering that the ending is -ol, echoing oil rather than the more common -le or -al, is the small spelling trap worth fixing in mind.

How the word is built

• petr- (rock, from Greek petra)
• -ol (oil, from Latin oleum; a shortening of petroleum)