Word.ws English Dictionary

naphtha

/ˈnæfθə/

naphtha noun: naturally occurring liquid petroleum.

Noun

naphtha (countable and uncountable, plural naphthas)

  1. (dated) Naturally occurring liquid petroleum.
  2. Any of a wide variety of aliphatic or aromatic liquid hydrocarbon mixtures distilled from petroleum or coal tar, especially as used in solvents or petrol.
    • The turmoil went on—no rest, no peace. […] It was nearly eleven o'clock now, and he strolled out again. In the little fair created by the costers' barrows the evening only seemed beginning; and the naphtha flares made one's eyes ache, the men's voices grated harshly, and the girls' faces saddened...1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
    • No, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into — they go in under archways, secret entrances of rotted concrete that only looked like loops of an underpass... certain trestles of blackened wood have moved slowly by overhead, and the smells begun of coal from days far to the...1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

naphtha meaning in Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati and Arabic

naphtha in Tamil

நாத்தா

naphtha in Bengali

ন্যাপথা

naphtha in Gujarati

naphtha
નખતેલ nakhtel

naphtha in Arabic

naturally occurring liquid petroleum
نَفْط nafṭ
More languagesFewer languages
naphtha in Persian
نفت naft

Examples of naphtha in a sentence

  • In the little fair created by the costers' barrows the evening only seemed beginning; and the naphtha flares made one's eyes ache, the men's voices grated harshly, and the girls' faces saddened one.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter VII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
  • The Common Room and the Library were lit by anbaric light, but the Scholars preferred the older, softer naphtha lamps in the Retiring Room.1995, Philip Pullman, Northern Lights:

Forms of naphtha

pluralnaphthas

Origin of naphtha

From Latin naphtha, from Ancient Greek νάφθα (náphtha, “naphtha”), from Old Persian *naftah, probably borrowed or assimilated from Akkadian 𒉌𒆳𒊏 (napṭu, “naphtha”) . The Greek mediation is reflected in the spelling – ‘ph’ and ‘th’ (from ‘φ’ and ‘θ’).

Words formed from naphtha

Phrases with naphtha

Questions about naphtha

What does naphtha mean?
Naphtha means naturally occurring liquid petroleum.
What is naphtha in Tamil?
Naphtha in Tamil is நாத்தா. See Naphtha meaning in Tamil.
How do you use naphtha in a sentence?
In the little fair created by the costers' barrows the evening only seemed beginning; and the naphtha flares made one's eyes ache, the men's voices grated harshly, and the girls' faces saddened one.
What part of speech is naphtha?
Naphtha is a noun.
How do you pronounce naphtha?
Naphtha is pronounced /ˈnæfθə/.
What is the plural of naphtha?
The plural of naphtha is naphthas.

Words near naphtha in the dictionary

  1. Napheyses
  2. Naphil
  3. Naphtali
  4. Naphtalite
  5. Naphtalites
  6. naphtha
  7. naphtha lamp
  8. naphtha lamps
  9. naphthacene
  10. naphthacenes
  11. naphthalate

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: naphtha (page history and authors); naphtha (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); naphtha (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); નખતેલ (Gujarati) (page history and authors). 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)-Vealhurl-naphtha.wav.

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