essential oil

Questions about essential oil

What does essential oil mean?

essential oil means "an oil having the odor or flavor of the plant from which it comes; used in perfume and flavorings".

What is another word for essential oil?

Close synonyms include volatile oil. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is essential oil a common word?

essential 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.