Word.ws English Dictionary

bbl

/biː biː ˈɛl/

bbl noun: volumes of crude oil pumped, stored, or sold (in bulk). Also the alternative form of BBL.

Noun (1)

bbl (plural bbl or bbls)

  1. (especially, most often) Volumes of crude oil pumped, stored, or sold (in bulk).
    • measured in 1000-bbl units
    • At present prices, cylindrical steel tankage in 55,000-bbl. units costs approximately 73c. per barrel storage.1920 May 8, H. T. Carlton, “New design for oil tankage”, in Engineering and Mining Journal, volume 109, number 19, retrieved 05 Mar 2023, page 1079
  2. (especially) Barrels (casks) transported or sold, or the volume that they represent.
    • 5 bbls. flour
    • Quantity & quality of Beef to be put in a bbl.1791 June 16, Government of New Hampshire, “An Act to Regulate the Exportation of Beef and Pork”, in The Laws of the State of New-Hampshire & c., United States: J. Melcher, page 334 (marginal heading)
  3. (internal combustion engines) Venturis in carburetion.
    • 1-bbl carburetor
    • 4-bbl carburetor
    Synonyms:
    v

Phrase capitalized: BBL

BBL

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of be back later

Noun (2) capitalized: BBL

BBL (plural BBLs)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Brazilian butt lift.
    • The estimated death rate from fat embolism may be as high as one in 3,000 for BBLs. A 2015 study of deaths from BBL surgery concluded that they probably occur as a result of gluteal blood vessels becoming damaged during the procedure, allowing fat to enter the bloodstream.2018 August 29, “Why butt lifts can be so dangerous”, in CNN, archived from the original on 20 Aug 2019
    • At an average cost of £3,000 abroad and £8,000 in the UK, the BBL uses liposuction to extract fat from a patient’s thighs to then inject it into their buttocks, but less invasive treatments proliferate.2018 November 18, Eva Wiseman, The Observer
  2. Alternative letter-case form of bbl (“barrels”)

Proper noun capitalized: BBL

BBL

  1. (UK, abbreviation, historical, initialism) Initialism of British Basketball League.
  2. (abbreviation, historical, initialism) Initialism of Bank Brussels Lambert, now part of the ING Group
  3. (Australia, abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of Big Bash League.

Also used as

bbl is also the alternative form of BBL.

bbl meaning in Urdu, Malayalam, Kannada and Punjabi

bbl in Urdu

بی بی ایل

bbl in Malayalam

ബിബിഎൽ

bbl in Kannada

ಬಿಬಿಎಲ್

bbl in Punjabi

ਬੀ. ਬੀ. ਐੱਲ, ਬੀ. ਬੀ. ਐਲ
More languagesFewer languages
bbl in Gujarati
બી. બી. એલ
bbl in Nepali
बीबीएल

Examples of bbl in a sentence

  • The overflush consisted of 100 bbls of uncrosslinked 3000 ppm polymer, followed by one wellbore volume (~150 bbls) plus 450 bbls crude behind pipe.1995, Proceedings, International Meeting on Petroleum Engineering, page 63:
  • […]5 hhds. rum/ 5 bbls. flour/ 1 bbl. sugar/ 9 do. pork/ 1 do. suett/ 3 do. cocoa/ 6 do. peas/ 2 ullage bbls. vinegar[…]1815 Niles Weekly Register volume 8, Supplement, p. 152. From an inventory of the frigate Confiance
  • 4 bbl. vinegar $32.00, 3 bbl. cider part full $6.501881, Ulster County, New York, County Legislature, Minutes of the Board of Supervisors of Ulster County, page 234:

Synonyms of bbl

Forms of bbl

pluralbbl
pluralbbls
pluralBBLs

Plural of bbl: bbl or bbls

Origin of bbl

Often thought to be modified from bl for barrel (b⸺l), reflecting a way of abbreviating that was used especially in previous centuries (compare do for ditto), wherein a doubled letter indicated plural count, as also with p.=page but pp.=pages and l.=line but ll.=lines; this method was used not only in English but also in scholarly New Latin and other modern languages heavily affected thereby, such as with Spanish EE. UU. According to this idea, addition of the suffix -s, as sometimes seen (e.g., 5 bbls or 5 bbls.), would seem to have come from writers who left the unit abbreviation itself unanalyzed (unparsed), thus adding a venially redundant marker of plural, somewhat like with MPGs for miles per gallon. Some sources claim that the abbreviation bbl is from Standard Oil's 42-gallon blue barrels. But this is contested: one source calls this a "persistent oilfield myth" and notes that "the abbreviation 'bbl' had been in use before the 1859 birth of the petroleum industry". Nonetheless, Standard Oil's blue barrels may have helped the bbl abbreviation stick.

Questions about bbl

What does bbl mean?
Bbl means volumes of crude oil pumped, stored, or sold (in bulk).
What is bbl in Urdu?
Bbl in Urdu is بی بی ایل. See Bbl meaning in Urdu.
How do you use bbl in a sentence?
The overflush consisted of 100 bbls of uncrosslinked 3000 ppm polymer, followed by one wellbore volume (~150 bbls) plus 450 bbls crude behind pipe.
What part of speech is bbl?
Bbl can be a noun, a phrase or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce bbl?
Bbl is pronounced /biː biː ˈɛl/.
What is the plural of bbl?
The plural of bbl is bbl.

Words near bbl in the dictionary

  1. bbiaf
  2. bbiafm
  3. BBIEAL
  4. BBIPOC
  5. BBIs
  6. bbl
  7. bbls
  8. BBM
  9. BBMed
  10. BBMing
  11. BBMs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bbl (page history and authors); BBL (page history and authors); bbl (Urdu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bbl (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bbl (Kannada, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bbl (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bbl (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); bbl (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-BBL.wav.

Cite this entry: “bbl.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bbl. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.