Green’s Dictionary of Slang

gas v.1

[gas n.1 (1)]

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

[US]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’.
[US]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?
[US]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.
[US]C.H. Smith Bill Arp 144: And here’s your ‘Harper’s Weekly’ [...] gassin lies and slanders in every issue.
[UK]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].
[US]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.
[Aus]‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Robbery Under Arms (1922) 81: Every one’ll be gassin’ about this big sale.
[UK]E. Pugh Tony Drum 186: You’re only gassing.
[UK]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.
[US]Ade Forty Modern Fables 57: I am ready to Gas freely on most Topics.
[UK]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.
[Aus]Sun. Times (Perth) 26 June 4/7: We have heard them gab and gas / From the Erlistoun to the Vasse.
[Aus]L. Stone Jonah 187: Anybody could tell w’en you’re dead [...] Yer’ll stop gassin’ about yerself!
[US]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’.
[US]S. Lewis Main Street (1921) 395: He’s young and likes to gas about books.
[Aus]Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 2 June 21/2: [T]here was a lantern-jawed bloke gassing about how the townies reckoned themselves smarties.
[UK]Wodehouse Inimitable Jeeves 224: They gas away by the hour [...] about literature and all that.
[US]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.
[UK]Wodehouse ‘Tried in the Furnace’ in 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.
[Aus]K. Tennant Foveaux 58: ’Oh let’s have some music,’ she cried angrily. ‘Sitting there gassin’ all the evening’.
[US]W. Winchell On Broadway 26 Jan. [synd. col.] The best answer to the chumps who are always gassing away ‘pure’ Americanism is [etc.].
[UK](con. 1912) B. Marshall George Brown’s Schooldays 143: A dressed-up old parson [...] gassed away about the Holy Spirit.
[US]M. Spillane Long Wait (1954) 103: [He] would have something else to gas about to the rest of his customers.
[US]P. Crump Burn, Killer, Burn! 51: You’re gassing off about pulling with the team.
[UK]M. Novotny Kings Road 230: Instead of gassing all night you should be preparing yourselves.
[US]E. Torres After Hours 127: Saso [...] was gassin’ her to death.
[UK]S. Berkoff West in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 129: Instead you pour a drink and gas about an incident at school.
[US]L. Stavsky et al. A2Z 41/1: gas – v. to flatter, hype or exaggerate.
[UK]J. Cameron It Was An Accident 179: Don’t gas over the ‘phone.
[UK]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.
[US]E. Weiner Big Boat to Bye-Bye 170: People gas off a lot these days about ‘information’.

2. (mainly US) to deceive.

[US]Wells & Davis Sketches of Williams College 72: Found that Fairspeech only wanted to ‘gas’ me, which he did pretty effectually.
[UK]‘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.
[US]B.H. Hall College Words (rev. edn) 226: gas [...] to deceive; to cheat.
[US]W.H. Thomes Bushrangers 104: Don’t talk such nonsense. I’m not to be gassed in that way.
[US]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?’.
[US]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.
[US]‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 158: We Words (My Favorite Things) [...] Take no shorts. Don’t get gassed.
Central Cee ‘LA Leakers Freestyle’ 🎵 You say ‘On God, no cap’ We say ‘Swear on your life, don’t gass’.

3. to boast.

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

[US]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.
[US]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?
[US]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.

In phrases

gas it (v.)

(US campus) to do badly on an examination.

[US]Baker et al. CUSS.
gas off (v.)

see sense 1 above.

gas someone up (v.)

to flatter, to deceive.

[US]G. Hayward 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.
[US]‘Dutch’ ? (Pronounced Que) [ebook] So you was gunna gas me up to do it [i.e. a murder].