cosmoline
noun, verb
cosmoline is a noun meaning “A substance obtained from the residues of the distillation of petroleum, essentially the same as vaseline, but of somewhat stiffer consistency, and…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled C-O-S-M-O-L-I-N-E, and it appears about once in every 89 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of cosmoline is cosmolines.
What does cosmoline mean?
noun
- 1
A substance obtained from the residues of the distillation of petroleum, essentially the same as vaseline, but of somewhat stiffer consistency, and consisting of a mixture of the higher paraffins.
verb
- 1
To coat with cosmoline.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of cosmoline
- cosmolines plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- cosmolining participle, present
- cosmolined participle, past
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is cosmoline?
Cosmoline appears about once in every 89 million words in written English, the 301,415th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Where does cosmoline come from?
Probably from cosmetic + Latin oleum (“oil”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).