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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

> Indeed, the name "fossil fuels" was marketing by Rockefeller and Standard Oil to create the impression of scarcity

I doubt this:

"The auncient Philosophers affirme, that there haue bene founde fishes vnder the earth, who (for that cause) they called Focilles [French focilles]."

- E. Fenton, translation of P. Boaistuau, Certaine secrete wonders of nature, containing a descriptio[n] of sundry strange things • (translated by Edward Fenton) · 1st edition, 1569, https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=fossil&tl=true, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/fossil_n?tab=meaning_and_use#...

"From French fossile, from Latin fossilis (“something which has been dug up”), from fodio (“I dig up”)."

- https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fossil

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"Fossil" originates as "obtained by digging", and refers to any mineral resource so obtained. Transferrence to "fossilised remains" (as in dinosaur bones, wood, plants, etc.) is secondary.

1610s, "any thing dug up;" 1650s (adj.) "obtained by digging" (of coal, salt, etc.), from French fossile (16c.), from Latin fossilis "dug up," from fossus, past participle of fodere "to dig," from PIE root bhedh- "to dig, pierce."*

Restricted noun sense of "geological remains of a plant or animal" is from 1736 (the adjective in the sense "pertaining to fossils" is from 1660s); slang meaning "old person" first recorded 1859. Fossil fuel (1833) preserves the earlier, broader sense.

<https://www.etymonline.com/word/fossil>

I'll note that the 1833 date for "fossil fuel" predates establishment of Standard Oil or its predecessors by four decades.

To be clear: I was agreeing with and amplifying the parent comment, not disagreeing with or correcting it.

He's not saying Standard Oil invented the term fossil, he's saying they invented/popularised the term "fossil fuel"

Google ngrams reveals his claim to be flagrant horse shit. The term wasn't popular until several decades after standard oil ceased to exist.

That may be true, but Google ngrams is hardly holy writ in the matter.

That may be true, but EricE is parroting long-since-debunked fake Facebook memes:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40664837>

Enough bullshit flinging already, eh?

Oddly enough, the term only really took off in the 1970s:

<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fossil%20fuel&...>

Zooming in on the 19th century, the term was already seeing use in the 1770s/80s, and was rising in usage well before 1860, by which time it had reached a peak.

<https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=fossil+fuel&ye...>

The Standard Oil Company was founded in 1882. Its predecessor Standard Oil Company of Ohio was founded in 1870.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil>

I call bullshit on EricE's unfounded claims.

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