wildcat well
- noun
- /ˈwaɪldˌkæt wɛl/
- Specialized
:
pozo exploratorio
- The company drilled a wildcat well in a new location hoping to find oil.
Examples
-
After a year of exploration, the wildcat well yielded significant oil production.
-
I turned a wildcat well into a dynasty.
-
Since 93 wildcat wells have now been drilled, from 93 to 113 wells, the curves correspond to the results given in Table 2.
Academic text (1991) -
Investors were excited about the potential of the new wildcat well that was being drilled.
Synonyms
4
9.3
An oil well drilled in a place not known to have oil
How Exploratory
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: in petroleum jargon 'wildcat' already denotes an exploratory oil well and combining it with 'well' (a shaft for oil) yields the same straightforward meaning. Thus a B1 learner who knows the technical constituent meanings can infer the MWE; (by contrast, learners who only know 'wildcat' as the animal would not infer this without the technical sense).
Etymology
The noun wildcat well comes from early oil workers who called very risky drilling wildcat, imagining a wild animal moving into unknown places. So a wildcat well is a well drilled to try to find oil in a place where oil was not known to exist.