Standard Lemma guide
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
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name
Initialism of British Basketball League.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: UK, abbreviation, alt-of, historical, initialism
Topics: ball-games, basketball, games, hobbies, lifestyle, sports
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
name
Initialism of Bank Brussels Lambert, now part of the ING Group
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: abbreviation, alt-of, historical, initialism
Topics: banking, business
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
name
Initialism of Big Bash League.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Australia, abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
Topics: ball-games, cricket, games, hobbies, lifestyle, sports
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Abbreviation of barrels and occasionally also of barrel (singular).
Volumes of crude oil pumped, stored, or sold (in bulk).
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: especially
Qualifier: most often
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Abbreviation of barrels and occasionally also of barrel (singular).
Barrels (casks) transported or sold, or the volume that they represent.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: especially
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Abbreviation of barrels and occasionally also of barrel (singular).
Venturis in carburetion.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Qualifier: internal combustion engines
Synonyms: v
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Initialism of Brazilian butt lift.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
Topics: medicine, sciences, surgery
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
Alternative letter-case form of bbl (“barrels”)
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: alt-of
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
phrase
Alternative form of BBL.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: Internet, alt-of, alternative
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
phrase
Initialism of be back later
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: abbreviation, alt-of, initialism
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
noun
any of various units of capacity
Definition source: Princeton WordNet 3.0
Synonyms: barrel
Antonyms: none provided
Broader terms: United States liquid unit, British capacity unit, Imperial capacity unit
History
Often thought to be modified from bl for barrel (b⸺l), reflecting a way of abbreviating that was used especially in previous centuries (compare do for ditto), wherein a doubled letter indicated plural count, as also with p.=page but pp.=pages and l.=line but ll.=lines; this method was used not only in English but also in scholarly New Latin and other modern languages heavily affected thereby, such as with Spanish EE. UU. According to this idea, addition of the suffix -s, as sometimes seen (e.g., 5 bbls or 5 bbls.), would seem to have come from writers who left the unit abbreviation itself unanalyzed (unparsed), thus adding a venially redundant marker of plural, somewhat like with MPGs for miles per gallon. Some sources claim that the abbreviation bbl is from Standard Oil's 42-gallon blue barrels. But this is contested: one source calls this a "persistent oilfield myth" and notes that "the abbreviation 'bbl' had been in use before the 1859 birth of the petroleum industry". Nonetheless, Standard Oil's blue barrels may have helped the bbl abbreviation stick.
Across languages
1 source translations are retained for this English entry.
