Word.ws English Dictionary

oil of talc

oil of talc noun: a nostrum made of calcined talc, famous in the 17th century as a cosmetic.

Noun

oil of talc (uncountable)

  1. (obsolete) A nostrum made of calcined talc, famous in the 17th century as a cosmetic.
    • That for the oil of Talc, dare spend / More than citizens dare lend / Them, or all their officers - Ben Jonson, To Sickness

Questions about oil of talc

What does oil of talc mean?
Oil of talc means a nostrum made of calcined talc, famous in the 17th century as a cosmetic.
What part of speech is oil of talc?
Oil of talc is a noun.

Words near oil of talc in the dictionary

  1. oil of myrbane
  2. oil of olives
  3. oil of palm
  4. oil of petre
  5. oil of spike
  6. oil of talc
  7. oil of tartar
  8. oil of tartar per deliquium
  9. oil of turpentine
  10. oil of vitriol
  11. oil of wine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oil of talc (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:

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