drying oil

1. 1.

   an oil that hardens in air due to oxidation and is often used as a paint or varnish base

   Broaderanimal oilvegetable oil

Questions about drying oil

What does drying oil mean?

drying oil means "an oil that hardens in air due to oxidation and is often used as a paint or varnish base".

Is drying oil a common word?

drying oil is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.