Noun

(dated) Naturally-occurring liquid petroleum.

Any of a wide variety of aliphatic or aromatic liquid hydrocarbon mixtures distilled from petroleum or coal tar, especially as used in solvents or petrol.

* , chapter=7

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=The turmoil went on—no rest, no peace. […] It was nearly eleven o'clock now, and he strolled out again. In the little fair created by the costers' barrows the evening only seemed beginning; and the naphtha flares made one's eyes ache, the men's voices grated harshly, and the girls' faces saddened one.}}

* 1995 , Philip Pullman, Northern Lights :

The Common Room and the Library were lit by anbaric light, but the Scholars preferred the older, softer naphtha lamps in the Retiring Room.

Noun

(en noun)

(chemistry) Any of a group of three isomeric aromatic hydrocarbons, di-methyl-benzene, found in coal and wood tar.

* 2006 , Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day , Vintage 2007, p. 262:

[...] proceeding, desperately, from such opiated catarrh preparations as Collis Brown's Mixture on to cocainized brain tonics, cigarettes soaked in absinthe, xylene in unventilated rooms, and so on [...].