hydraulic fracturing

noun

: fracking

… hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process used to extract oil and natural gas from bedrock.

—Maggie Astor

The gas-fired plants come courtesy of the revolution in hydraulic fracturing ("fracking"), which has delivered a vast supply of low-cost natural gas to an electricity market that has struggled with steadily rising coal prices since 2001.

—Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren

Examples of hydraulic fracturing in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In places where there is not enough water in the ground or where the rock is too dense to move heat naturally, these installations drill deep holes and inject fluid into the hot rocks, creating new fractures and opening existing ones, much like hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas production. —Moones Alamooti, The Conversation, 8 Oct. 2025

Its most important offering is mesh frac sand used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking). —Brett Owens, Forbes.com, 17 Aug. 2025

Halliburton first developed early hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, techniques more than 75 years ago under founder Erle P. Halliburton. —Jordan Blum, Fortune, 22 July 2025

Instead of just drilling vertical wells, the company uses horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing techniques to harvest naturally occurring heat. —Jeff Young, MSNBC Newsweek, 21 June 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1948, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for hydraulic fracturing

• nonmanufacturing
• remanufacturing
• manufacturing