gas v.1
1. (also gas off) to chatter, to talk inconsequentially and continually, to offer only ‘hot air’.
Detroit Free Press (MI) 31 July 2/2: We give him credit for [...] presenting them as he does by an acknoiwledgement that he was ‘gassing’. | ||
Wisconsin Exp. (Madison, WI) 1 May 2/2: But really neighbor, were you not gassing a little when you told your readers that our newly appointed post master was a slave owner? | ||
Indiana Herald (IN) 10 Sept. 2/3: The doughty Captain was often taunted [...] with the inconsistency between his professions and his acts, but no taunt could drive him into the battle-field. He greatly preferred gassing in New York to fighting in Mexico. | ||
Bill Arp 144: And here’s your ‘Harper’s Weekly’ [...] gassin lies and slanders in every issue. | ||
London Figaro 14 Dec: There is no good to be got out of gassing about rallying around standards, uniting as one man to resist, etc [F&H]. | ||
Americanisms 263: One of the means employed for this purpose is to deliver long speeches, merely to consume time, and for this the expression to gas, has, of late, come into use. | ||
Robbery Under Arms (1922) 81: Every one’ll be gassin’ about this big sale. | ||
Tony Drum 186: You’re only gassing. | ||
Complete Stalky & Co. (1987) 186: If he hadn’t been gassing at us the way he has, that young devil Beetle wouldn’t have dreamed of marbles. | ‘A Little Prep’ in||
Forty Modern Fables 57: I am ready to Gas freely on most Topics. | ||
Five Notions 45: ’E don’t gas about the game, / Modest Bobs; / But ’e plays it all the same. | ‘Bobs’ in||
Sun. Times (Perth) 26 June 4/7: We have heard them gab and gas / From the Erlistoun to the Vasse. | ||
Jonah 187: Anybody could tell w’en you’re dead [...] Yer’ll stop gassin’ about yerself! | ||
‘Troubles of Two Girls’ in S.F. Chron. 8 June 31/2: Do yuh think the disparity in our ages’d get people to gassin’. | ||
Main Street (1921) 395: He’s young and likes to gas about books. | ||
Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 2 June 21/2: [T]here was a lantern-jawed bloke gassing about how the townies reckoned themselves smarties. | ||
Inimitable Jeeves 224: They gas away by the hour [...] about literature and all that. | ||
World to Win 88: The boes weary of talking to their own kind, and long to gas with rubes or home guards at times. | ||
Young Men in Spats 43: [You] start to sidle out before the chap can spot [your old school tie] and grab you and start gassing. | ‘Tried in the Furnace’ in||
Foveaux 58: ’Oh let’s have some music,’ she cried angrily. ‘Sitting there gassin’ all the evening’. | ||
On Broadway 26 Jan. [synd. col.] The best answer to the chumps who are always gassing away ‘pure’ Americanism is [etc.]. | ||
(con. 1912) George Brown’s Schooldays 143: A dressed-up old parson [...] gassed away about the Holy Spirit. | ||
Long Wait (1954) 103: [He] would have something else to gas about to the rest of his customers. | ||
Burn, Killer, Burn! 51: You’re gassing off about pulling with the team. | ||
Kings Road 230: Instead of gassing all night you should be preparing yourselves. | ||
After Hours 127: Saso [...] was gassin’ her to death. | ||
Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 129: Instead you pour a drink and gas about an incident at school. | West in||
A2Z 41/1: gas – v. to flatter, hype or exaggerate. | et al.||
It Was An Accident 179: Don’t gas over the ‘phone. | ||
Life is Pants 201: Pippa and I talk about anything and everything, in no logical order, gassing away, putting the world to rights. | ||
Big Boat to Bye-Bye 170: People gas off a lot these days about ‘information’. |
2. (mainly US) to deceive.
Sketches of Williams College 72: Found that Fairspeech only wanted to ‘gas’ me, which he did pretty effectually. | ||
‘Epistle from Joe Muggins’s Dog’ in Era (London) 21 Sept. 5/1: But dang it, thort I, its too good, they are only gassin us. | ||
College Words (rev. edn) 226: gas [...] to deceive; to cheat. | ||
Bushrangers 104: Don’t talk such nonsense. I’m not to be gassed in that way. | ||
Teen-Age Mafia 35: ‘We were thinking of taking in the show.’ ‘You gas me. What do you want with the cruddy flicks?’. | ||
Venetian Blonde (2006) 145: I wondered if I could expect Rinny Jim in a week, or if she had only been gassing me. | ||
Portable Promised Land (ms.) 158: We Words (My Favorite Things) [...] Take no shorts. Don’t get gassed. | ||
🎵 You say ‘On God, no cap’ We say ‘Swear on your life, don’t gass’. | ‘LA Leakers Freestyle’
3. to boast.
Eve. Teleg. (Philadelphia, PA) 22 Jan. 7/1: In New York a greater talker is said to [...] ‘gas’. | ||
‘’Arry on ’appiness’ in Punch 3 Jan. 4/1: Larks, any amount of ’em, going, advertisements gassing like fun. | ||
‘’Arry on the Ice’ in Punch 23 Feb. 85: ’Arry don’t want to gas, but ’Em Bates / Got the needle tremenjus, I tell yer, and threatened to take orf the skates. | ||
Marvel 23 Dec. 7: I don’t want to gas and say I am bound to come out on top. | ||
Cockney At Home 147: There isn’t any tea for you, if you’re going to make that early start you gassed about. |
4. (US black) to tell, to inform.
Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 17: Shortly after, the skull came up on the tab action, and gassed the scribe that he was beat for some beater. | ||
Cool World (1965) 72: No Man you aint gassin me you really got an ocean you can get on to on the subway? | ||
Out of the Burning (1961) 13: All through my interview, he kept dropping fag hints until I told him to go screw. So he gassed the judge about me. |
In phrases
(US campus) to do badly on an examination.
CUSS. | et al.
see sense 1 above.
to ferret out information in a clandestine manner.
Sl. and Its Analogues. |
to flatter, to deceive.
Corruption Officer [ebook] Ch. 10: I knew there was a reason for the run-down of the works in this place, for the gas me up sales pitch. | ||
? (Pronounced Que) [ebook] So you was gunna gas me up to do it [i.e. a murder]. |