Meaning of petrolize | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To treat (water) with kerosene in order to exterminate mosquitoes.
   transitive
2. To convert into a petroleum-based economy.

Examples

“Over a four-year period the RF led a large-scale assault on yellow fever's Aedes aegypti mosquito vector, organizing a small army of Mexican and American doctors and local assistants and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to spray, petrolize, drain, fill, and deposit larvicidal fishes in virtually every home, breeding site, and stagnant water source in the region of Veracruz.”

“Once oil accounts for 30 percent of a nation's exports, the money petrolizes the place, the same way human slavery changed Rome, Brazil, and the U.S. South.”

“Despite the efforts taken to forestall them, Mexico found itself with all the symptoms of a “petrolized” economy.”

“The Mexican economy did not 'petrolize', as happened in Venezuela, since oil production represented only between 10 per cent and 14 per cent of GDP in this period.”

CEFR level