{"id":12564,"date":"2016-07-04T10:11:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T09:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=12564"},"modified":"2016-07-04T10:11:15","modified_gmt":"2016-07-04T09:11:15","slug":"its-a-gas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=12564","title":{"rendered":"It’s a gas!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Hiberno-English people might describe something fun and enjoyable as a gas<\/strong>. For example, “That’s gas”, “A gas laugh”, “Come on, it’ll be gas”, “He’s a gas character”, “Your man is gas” [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Last week an Irish friend told me that this expression comes from laughing gas (nitrous oxide), which was used at parties to induce hilarity and euphoria in the guests.<\/p>\n

According to The Grammarphobia Blog<\/a>, the earliest citation in the OED for gas meaning fun was in James Joyce’s 1914 collection of stories, Dubliners<\/em>, in which one character says he\u2019s brought along a slingshot \u201cto have some gas with the birds.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Historically Speaking<\/a>, Humphrey Davy noticed that nitrous oxide produced a state of induced euphoria which led to laughter followed by a state of stupor and, finally, a dreamy and sedated state. He introduced it to the British upper class in 1799 and it became used as a recreational drug at “laughing parties”. The term “it’s a gas” soon came to refer to what happened at such parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Hiberno-English people might describe something fun and enjoyable as a gas. For example, “That’s gas”, “A gas laugh”, “Come on, it’ll be gas”, “He’s a gas character”, “Your man is gas” [source]. Last week an Irish friend told me that this expression comes from laughing gas (nitrous oxide), which was used at parties to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104,10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12564\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}