Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also gas off) to chatter, to talk inconsequentially and continually, to offer only ‘hot air’.

1844		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’.
1849		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?
1851		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.
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 144: And here’s your ‘Harper’s Weekly’ [...] gassin lies and slanders in every issue.
1872		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].
1872		Schele De Vere 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.
1888		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Robbery Under Arms (1922) 81: Every one’ll be gassin’ about this big sale.
1898		E. Pugh Tony Drum 186: You’re only gassing.
1899		Kipling ‘A Little Prep’ in 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.
1902		Ade Forty Modern Fables 57: I am ready to Gas freely on most Topics.
1903		T.W.H. Crosland ‘Bobs’ in Five Notions 45: ’E don’t gas about the game, / Modest Bobs; / But ’e plays it all the same.
1904		Sun. Times (Perth) 26 June 4/7: We have heard them gab and gas / From the Erlistoun to the Vasse.
1911		L. Stone Jonah 187: Anybody could tell w’en you’re dead [...] Yer’ll stop gassin’ about yerself!
1913		H. Green ‘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’.
1920		S. Lewis Main Street (1921) 395: He’s young and likes to gas about books.
1923		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 2 June 21/2: [T]here was a lantern-jawed bloke gassing about how the townies reckoned themselves smarties.
1923		Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 224: They gas away by the hour [...] about literature and all that.
1935		J. Conroy World to Win 88: The boes weary of talking to their own kind, and long to gas with rubes or home guards at times.
1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 58: ’Oh let’s have some music,’ she cried angrily. ‘Sitting there gassin’ all the evening’.
1942		W. Winchell On Broadway 26 Jan. [synd. col.] The best answer to the chumps who are always gassing away ‘pure’ Americanism is [etc.].
1946		(con. 1912) B. Marshall George Brown’s Schooldays 143: A dressed-up old parson [...] gassed away about the Holy Spirit.
1951		M. Spillane Long Wait (1954) 103: [He] would have something else to gas about to the rest of his customers.
1962		P. Crump Burn, Killer, Burn! 51: You’re gassing off about pulling with the team.
1971		M. Novotny Kings Road 230: Instead of gassing all night you should be preparing yourselves.
1979		E. Torres After Hours 127: Saso [...] was gassin’ her to death.
1985		S. Berkoff West in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 129: Instead you pour a drink and gas about an incident at school.
1995		L. Stavsky et al. A2Z 41/1: gas – v. to flatter, hype or exaggerate.
1996		J. Cameron It Was An Accident 179: Don’t gas over the ‘phone.
2005		E. Sherbert Life is Pants 201: Pippa and I talk about anything and everything, in no logical order, gassing away, putting the world to rights.
2005		E. Weiner Big Boat to Bye-Bye 170: People gas off a lot these days about ‘information’.

2. (mainly US) to deceive.

1847		Wells & Davis Sketches of Williams College 72: Found that Fairspeech only wanted to ‘gas’ me, which he did pretty effectually.
1851		‘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.
1856		B.H. Hall College Words (rev. edn) 226: gas [...] to deceive; to cheat.
1873		W.H. Thomes Bushrangers 104: Don’t talk such nonsense. I’m not to be gassed in that way.
1959		W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 35: ‘We were thinking of taking in the show.’ ‘You gas me. What do you want with the cruddy flicks?’.
1963		A.S. Fleischman Venetian Blonde (2006) 145: I wondered if I could expect Rinny Jim in a week, or if she had only been gassing me.
2002		‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 158: We Words (My Favorite Things) [...] Take no shorts. Don’t get gassed.
2022		Central Cee ‘LA Leakers Freestyle’ 🎵 You say ‘On God, no cap’ We say ‘Swear on your life, don’t gass’.

3. to boast.

1870		Eve. Teleg. (Philadelphia, PA) 22 Jan. 7/1: In New York a greater talker is said to [...] ‘gas’.
1885		‘’Arry on ’appiness’ in Punch 3 Jan. 4/1: Larks, any amount of ’em, going, advertisements gassing like fun.
1889		‘’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.
1905		Marvel 23 Dec. 7: I don’t want to gas and say I am bound to come out on top.
1914		E. Pugh 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.

1944		D. Burley 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.
1959		W. Miller Cool World (1965) 72: No Man you aint gassin me you really got an ocean you can get on to on the subway?
1960		I. Freeman 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.