bitumen
(bɪˈtjuːmɪn, ˈbɪtjʊmɪn)
Forms: 5 bithumen, bethyn, (betune), 6 betumen, 7 bitamen, bitum(e, bittumen, bytumen, 6– bitumen.
[a. L. bitūmen (stem bitūmin-). Cf. F. and It. bitume, Pg. betume, Pr. betum, Sp. betun, from which some of the obs. Eng. forms were taken.]
1. Originally, a kind of mineral pitch found in Palestine and Babylon, used as mortar, etc. The same as asphalt, mineral pitch, Jew's pitch, Bitumen judaicum.
| 1460 J. Capgrave Chron. 30 A vessel of wykyris, filled the joyntis with tow erde, cleped bithumen. 1480 Caxton Ovid's Met. xv. iv, The..bethyn & sulphur brennyng. 1577 J. Frampton Joyf. Newes 6 Betumen which is a kind of Pitch. 1601 Holland Pliny I. 101 Asphaltites, or the lake of Sodom..bringeth forth nothing but Bitumen. 1609 Bible (Douay) Gen. vi. 14 Thou..shalt pitch it [the arke] within, and without with bitume. 1610 Holland Camden's Brit. i. 519 Coles, being of the nature of hardned Bitamen. 1656 Blount Glossogr., Bitume, a kind of clay or slime naturally clammy, like pitch, growing in some Countries of Asia. 1817 Byron Manfred i. i. 90 The lakes of bitumen Rise boilingly higher. 1849 Grote Greece ii. lxx. (1862) VI. 239 [The Wall of Media] was of bricks cemented with bitumen. |
2. a. In modern scientific use, the generic name of certain mineral inflammable substances, native hydrocarbons more or less oxygenated, liquid, semi-solid, and solid, including naphtha, petroleum, asphalt, etc. elastic bitumen: mineral caoutchouc or Elaterite.
| 1605 Timme Quersit. i. xiii. 52 There are also manie kindes of..bitumen. 1635 Swan Spec. M. vi. (1643) 297 Naphtha, is a liquid Bitume. 1677 Moxon Mech. Exerc. (1703) 243 Morter used..at Rome..called Maltha, from a kind of Bitumen Dug there. 1835 Penny Cycl. IV. 473/2 Elastic bitumen is soft and elastic like caoutchouc. 1857 Page Adv. Text-bk. Geol. xx. (1876) 441 The bitumens—naphtha, petroleum, asphalt—have been long known and used in the arts. |
b. the bitumen: a tarred road; spec. the road from Darwin to Alice Springs. Austral. colloq.
| 1953 Baker Australia Speaks v. 137 One for the bitumen, a final round of drinks, i.e. ‘one for the road’. 1954 B. Miles Stars my Blanket xxv. 219 We had not seen another vehicle since we turned off the bitumen at Elliott. 1958 A. J. Toynbee East to West xiv. 44 ‘The bitumen’, running dead straight for hundreds of miles without a swerve, is an impressive symbol of the modern world. 1963 V. B. Cranley 27,000 Miles through Australia ii. 19 The minute you left the ‘bitumen’, as tarred roads are called here, you were back in the bush. |
3. A pigment prepared from asphalt.
| 1855 J. Edwards Paint. in Oil 26 Bitumen..is Asphaltum ground in strong drying oil..for the painter's use. |
† 4. Used by Turner, for the sap of the birch-tree.
| 1551 Turner Herbal (1568) F v b, The frenche men seth out of it a certain iuce or suc otherwise called bitumen. |
5. attrib. bitumen process, a photographic process using a metal plate coated with bitumen which is rendered insoluble by the action of light.
| 1816 Shelley Alastor 85 Bitumen lakes. 1837 Carlyle Fr. Rev. III. iii. i. 150 Here lay the bitumen stratum, there the brimstone one. 1858 T. Sutton Dict. Photogr. 329 Mr. Macpherson is not the inventor of the bitumen process; M. Nicéphore Niépce first used bitumen in photography. 1960 A. L. M. Sowerby Dict. Photogr. (ed. 19) 40 Half-tone or Process Blocks by the Bitumen Process. A copper or zinc plate is coated with bitumen, and it is exposed... After development, or the removal of the superfluous bitumen, the plate is etched. |