I don't think this article is meaningful. It's a grab-bag of factoids and is neither encyclopedic nor particularly useful. Please note that the lead lacks any citations. The reason, I speculate, is simply because there are none that aren't just dictionary definitions. The word oil comes from the word oleum. So, let's consider oleum. Is it a liquid? yes, at room temperature. Is it viscous (relative to water?) yes. Is it flammable? No. Is it a (mixture of) hydrocarbons? No. Is it water insoluble and "lipophilic"? No and (arguably) no. For those editors seemingly ignorant of chemistry, oleum is fuming sulfuric acid (a mixture of H2SO4 + SO3). So, that's a clear counterexample to what the lead claims. Let's take another chemical material: polyethylene. Liquid? -it can be (but not at RT) Water insoluble? Yes. Viscous? Yes. Flammable? Yes. So, it would generally be considered an oil, right? No, not at all. ISO VG (Viscosity Grade) specifies a range of viscosities (I don't recall if they're dynamic or kinematic) just slightly above water's 1 cPs/1cSt to hundreds of thousands of times more viscous. (at 40C). I'm unaware of an oil below VG 2, the difference between 1 and 2, that is, the difference in viscosity between an VG 2 oil and water would be difficult to notice to the average person looking at two bottles containing them. So, while characterizing an oil as 'viscous' isn't wrong, it's not a particularly good way to distinguish an oil from a non-oil.
In point of fact, the word "oil" is usually just a synonym for 'viscous liquid'. There are various industries that use the word for their own purposes, true. That they are usefully lumped into a single article is highly dubious. Orange oil, mostly limonene, has a viscosity about that of water. So, what do we know about a material someone is (correctly) describing as an "oil"? That it's liquid and that's it's either higher dynamic viscosity than water or water insoluble. (Although, I imagine that a partially water soluble liquid that is mixed in to water at concentrations below its solubility limit and subsequently separated due to changes in temperature or composition (i.e. salting out) of the water solution would also be termed "an oil" regardless of viscosity. My various issues with the categorization(s) this article uses is that upon examination, they really aren't strictly correct. Oil is a vague term with various meanings. Not sure why it qualifies for its own WP article. Oh, and perhaps most egregious of all, there's no acknowledgement that the term oil likely refers to petroleum. I submit that if that isn't obvious to you, you shouldn't be editing this article and if it is obvious then why is it absent in the lead??~2026-92463-4 (talk) 14:36, 23 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
level-4 vital article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Done, thanks for providing link Bongan® →TalkToMe← 13:30, 13 November 2025 (UTC)