paraffin

Other forms of paraffin

plural

paraffins·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about paraffin

What does paraffin mean?

paraffin means "from crude petroleum; used for candles and for preservative or waterproof coatings". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in paraffin?

paraffin has 3 syllables: par-af-fin. The stress falls on "par". In IPA it is /ˈpɛɹəfən/.

What is another word for paraffin?

Close synonyms include paraffin wax, methane series, alkane series, alkane, paraffin series. 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 paraffin a common word?

paraffin is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.