How to Use turpentine in a Sentence

turpentine

noun

• Wet a sponge or clean cloth with turpentine and tamp the stain from the back vigorously to break up the paint.
  — Lauren Smith McDonough, Good Housekeeping, 2 Feb. 2023
• There was the rum that tasted alarmingly of turpentine, the liqueur that seemed to give me a splitting headache.
  — M. Carrie Allan, Washington Post, 29 July 2019
• The people of Rosewood farmed or worked at the sawmill in the town of Sumner, some three miles away, or at a turpentine camp in Wylly.
  — Craig Pittman, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Jan. 2023
• All woodwork, desks, chairs, tables and doors should be wiped off with a cloth wet with linseed, kerosene and turpentine.
  — Craig Hlavaty, Houston Chronicle, 15 Jan. 2018
• The British navy gobbled up the colonies’ longleaf for its rot-resistant wood and gummy sap, from which turpentine and pitch were made.
  — Ryan Dezember, WSJ, 9 Oct. 2018
• Any container would do—whiskey or ale jugs, salt or turpentine vats.
  — Brian Jacobson, The Atlantic, 8 Sep. 2017
• Many of the pupils who went to school there were the children of people who worked hard picking oranges or harvesting turpentine in rural Lake County.
  — Joy Wallace Dickinson, orlandosentinel.com, 5 Dec. 2021
• Most needle bearing trees produce a sticky sap that is loaded with turpentine.
  — Tim MacWelch, Popular Science, 26 Dec. 2019
• Two-thirds of the pine trees at the entrance are broken, snapped over into inverted V's, dripping turpentine tears, pointing their jagged splinters at the sky.
  — By Michael Browning, miamiherald, 25 Aug. 2015
• Melton Futch was an only child, born to a couple who had moved from rural Georgia to the Florida Panhandle to find work at a saw mill and turpentine still.
  — New York Times, 6 Apr. 2021
• Nothing beats good ol’ fashioned turpentine for cleaning pine-tree sap off your Christmas tree tools.
  — Joseph Truini, Popular Mechanics, 21 Oct. 2019
• Contessa's neighbor had been using turpentine to clean paint off a table, the man explains.
  — Leila Atassi, cleveland.com, 14 Mar. 2018
• Their houses were leveled by turpentine bombs dropped from airplanes, making Tulsa the first U.S. city ever bombed by air.
  — Simon Norfolk, National Geographic, 10 Feb. 2020
• It’s like Fred Biletnikoff using so much Stickum that equipment managers had to wash his uniforms in turpentine.
  — Greg Moore, The Arizona Republic, 2 Feb. 2022
• In modern times, retsina has gotten a bad rap as cheap swill with overpowering notes of turpentine and paint thinner.
  — Esther Mobley, San Francisco Chronicle, 16 Aug. 2022
• Smith was the only person Uncle George allowed in his studio, and the boy silently observed how to stretch a canvas, mix oils and turpentine, and use pigments to bring life to a blank surface.
  — Steven Levy, Wired, 31 Aug. 2021
• Jocasta is the owner of a vast plantation called River Run in North Carolina, made wealthy by the sale of tobacco, lumber, and turpentine and based on the work of slaves.
  — Outlander Fan, Marie Claire, 12 Nov. 2018
• The resin most likely came from trees such as the mastic gum or Chios turpentine, which historically have been used for preservation.
  — Becky Lang, Discover Magazine, 18 Nov. 2013
• Its signature vista is an inland rainforest of Kauri pines, giant ferns, and turpentine trees that can live for a thousand years.
  — Matthew Abbott, Environment, 18 Dec. 2020
• Other products made at the Mackie factory -- which was taken over by Delta Pine Products around the 1940s -- included turpentine, axle grease, paint and pine tar.
  — Mike Scott, NOLA.com, 5 Mar. 2018
• Newspaper clippings touted goose grease and turpentine as remedies for the disease that claimed more than 300 lives in Stearns County during the deadliest four months.
  — Jenny Berg, Star Tribune, 28 May 2021
• The sticks were daubed with smells like (to English-speaking sensibilities) leather, orange, fish, garlic and turpentine.
  — The Economist, 18 Jan. 2018
• Many worked in the turpentine, lumber and citrus industries in Groveland.
  — Audra D. S. Burch, New York Times, 15 Oct. 2022
• Like, some people might bulk buy paper towels or toilet paper, or turpentine . . .
  — New York Times, 8 Nov. 2021
• To slow the process of decay, a turpentine-like solution was sometimes injected as an enema to dissolve the digestive tract.
  — George Johnson, Discover Magazine, 30 July 2013
• One involved suspending seed pearls over a boiling solution of vinegar and turpentine, which softened the pearls into paste.
  — Kat Eschner, Smithsonian, 14 Dec. 2017
• Or the raucous banquets with Communist Party officials every night, the kind with free-flowing mao-tai — a clear, fermented sorghum liquor that tastes like sweet turpentine.
  — Washington Post, 13 Dec. 2021
• Residents worked in lumber yards, turpentine mills and, later, at a factory that turned trees into pencils.
  — Lane Degregory, orlandosentinel.com, 5 Sep. 2021
• Whites plundered and attacked Greenwood with machine guns and turpentine Molotov cocktails dropped from airplanes.
  — Maria C. Hunt, House Beautiful, 1 June 2021
• This ethereal scene is interrupted by a splash of turpentine that erases the color and returns us to the reality of the bare canvas and the artist’s spontaneous actions upon it.
  — Roberta Smith, New York Times, 19 Mar. 2020

Last Updated: 5 Sep 2024