Definition of "petroleum" []

• A thick, flammable, yellow-to-black mixture of gaseous, liquid, and solid hydrocarbons that occurs naturally beneath the earth's surface, can be separated into fractions including natural gas, gasoline, naphtha, kerosene, fuel and lubricating oils, paraffin wax, and asphalt and is used as raw material for a wide variety of derivative products. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Also, what I call petroleum colors in blue, gray, green."
• "By Paying high prices for petroleum from the Middle East?"
• "BHP said it hit quarterly production records in petroleum thanks to a strong performance at the Pyrenees crude oil field off Western Australia and liquefied natural gas production from the North West Shelf."