paraffin

A waxy white or colorless solid hydrocarbon mixture used to make candles, wax paper, lubricants, and sealing materials.

A member of the alkane series.

Kerosene.

To saturate, impregnate, or coat with paraffin.

To coat or impregnate with paraffin; treat with paraffin.

The collective name for compounds of the marsh-gas series which have the general formula C_nH_{2n + 2}—that is, two more than twice as many hydrogen atoms as carbon atoms.

Specifically, in com. and manufacturing, a substance obtained by the dry distillation of wood, peat, bituminous coal, wax, etc.

Petroleum or kerosene.

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.

See Ozocerite.