Other forms: gases
A gas is the state of matter with no fixed shape or volume, like the air around you. Natural gas, a gas leak, gas expands.
The three classic states are solid, liquid and gas, and a gas fills whatever container it is in. In Britain, gas usually means the fuel piped to homes; in America, gas is short for gasoline, which is petrol, and that is a genuine and occasionally serious source of confusion. Note gas mark, the British oven scale; greenhouse gas; and gassing, which informally means talking at length.
1noungasThe state of matter with no fixed shape.
“A gas fills about whatever container it is put in.”
2nounfuelThe fuel supplied to homes.
“We cook with gas, but the heating is electric.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
gas is a state of matter or a fuel.
The Flemish chemist Van Helmont coined gas in about 1650 from the Greek khaos, meaning empty space. It is one of the very few scientific words invented outright by a named person rather than assembled from Latin.
Dutch
gas
English, today
gas
Built from
Borrowed from Dutch gas. Dutch gas, coined by Jan Baptist van Helmont in Ortus Medicinae. Derived from Ancient Greek χάος (“chasm, void, empty space”); perhaps also inspired by geest (“breath, vapour, spirit”). a doublet of chaos. 1648.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA