this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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the word, bro :v
It translates to steam oil
i see! thanks. so it's basically the same word as gas-oline then?
Did you think it was going to be "Phoenix urine" or something cool like that?
I mean, sometimes China does do that. Per the other commenter diesel gets "kindling oil", which might not involve mythical creatures but still is a neat thing to call it.
no, it was mostly because the map is weird; the green part is not all "benzene", it's many different words rooted in the german "benzin". so my assumption was that "other" languages probably have words based on the big, common words too, just not in a way the map creator understood. and you at least confirmed that for one country!
It does look like a pretty neat calque. I hadn't noticed that the -oline ending was likely related to oleum.