The Collaborative International Dictionary
Cosmoline \Cos"mo*line\ (k?z"m?-l?n), n. [Prob. fr. cosmetic + L. oleum oil.] (Chem.) A substance obtained from the residues of the distillation of petroleum, essentially the same as vaseline, but of somewhat stiffer consistency, and consisting of a mixture of the higher paraffines; a kind of petroleum jelly.
Wiktionary
n. (context chemistry English) A substance obtained from the residues of the distillation of petroleum, essentially the same as vaseline, but of somewhat stiffer consistency, and consisting of a mixture of the higher paraffins.
Wikipedia
Cosmoline is the genericized trademark for a generic class of rust inhibitors, typically conforming to United States Military Standard MIL-C-11796C Class 3, that are a brown colored wax-like mass; have a slight fluorescence; and have a petroleum-like odor and taste (as detected when working with it).
Usage examples of "cosmoline".
The dark hall, the odor of dead rodents, peculiarly the smell of cosmoline, wetted burned paper.
A ragged man who might have been a farm-tramp or a rich planter before his capture had gotten a bale of cloth open and was tossing rags around while the chief engineer inspected weapons and showed people how to clean out the cosmoline and fill their spare magazines.
He and Bagrat and two newly hired employees spent one entire weekend at the strenuous, exceedingly messy job of opening crates, unpacking rifles and pistols, coating all the metal surfaces with Cosmoline, then repacking them.
Kalashnikov, however, had been unwrapped and cleansed of Cosmoline, the paraffin-based preservative in which, since W.
Uzis and their AK-47s that had been cached all over the jungle, cleaned off the rust-resisting Cosmoline and began training in earnest.