refinery
Americannoun
-
refineries
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of refinery
Explanation
A refinery is a facility where raw materials are converted into some valuable substance by having impurities removed. At an oil refinery, crude oil is treated and made into gasoline and other petroleum products. Whenever a material needs to have unwanted parts removed in order to be made into a useable product, it must be refined — clarified or processed. This is done at a plant called a refinery. A sugar refinery, for example, converts sugar cane or beets into familiar white, refined crystals of sugar. Refinery comes from refine, which is rooted in the now-obsolete verb fine, "make fine."
Vocabulary lists containing refinery
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The Cay
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
EET Fuels, formerly known as Essar, which runs Stanlow refinery, pleaded guilty this year to 12 charges of breaching environmental law between 2018 and 2020.
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2026
The refinery is supplied by Celba, which informed the company at the time of disruptions to natural gas availability.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 6, 2026
But documents obtained by investigative journalists from SourceMaterial describe other breaches from the refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, with toxic chemicals and oil regularly spilled into the waterways and even groundwater.
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2026
Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote is laying the groundwork for a $15 billion oil refinery near Lamu Town on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 3, 2026
Torrance also has an ExxonMobil refinery that churns out much of Southern California’s gasoline.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
Goldman Sachs expects diesel to stay high through 2027 because refineries can’t keep up.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 7, 2026
While shipments of crude through the Strait of Hormuz have recently picked up, damage to refineries in the region, along with those in Russia, have led to shortages of some refined products like diesel.
From Barron's ● Oct. 7, 2026
While margins over the quarter jumped, Shell wasn’t able to maintain the same level of activity at its refineries as it did in the second quarter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 7, 2026
"We need to see consistent law enforcement, and we need to see the threat of punitive measures by all industries, whether it's the water industry or oil refineries," Wallace said.
From BBC ● Oct. 6, 2026
Royal Dutch Shell had borrowed him from his American company because he was an expert in refineries and gasoline production.
From "The Cay" by Theodore Taylor
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
