English
gas
Gas comes from Ancient Greek χάος ‘chasm, void, empty space’.
- Ancient Greekc. 800–300 BCEχάος1kháos‘chasm’
- Dutchc. 1500–presentgas1
- Englishearliest quotation 1899gas1
attested reconstructed ? uncertain or disputed deepest recorded ancestor
- 1 Wiktionary, English gas
- Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1899, Stephen Crane: “[…] (it was the town's humour to be always…”.
Lineage
- Ancient Greekc. 800–300 BCEχάοςWiktionary, English gaskháos‘chasm’
- Dutchc. 1500–presentgasWiktionary, English gas
- Englishearliest quotation 1899gasWiktionary, English gas. Earliest quotation in Wiktionary’s entry: 1899, Stephen Crane: “[…] (it was the town's humour to be always…”
first attested First attested in 1648 (as stated in Wiktionary’s etymology)
The story
Borrowed from Dutch gas, coined by chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont in Ortus Medicinae. Derived from Ancient Greek χάος (kháos, “chasm, void, empty space”); perhaps also inspired by geest (‘breath, vapour, spirit’). First attested in 1648.
Word family
English words that share an ancestor with gas, grouped by the ancestor they share, most familiar first.
through Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰeh₂- ‘to yawn, gape’
12 more relatives in the full family tree
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Today it means
noun Matter in an intermediate state between liquid and plasma that can be contained only if it is fully surrounded by a solid (or in a bubble of liquid, or held together by gravitational pull); it can condense into a liquid, or can (rarely) become a solid directly by deposition.
Sources
Sources: Wiktionary, “gas”. By Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0, via kaikki.org (dump of Oct 3 2026); text adapted and restructured. Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word. License.
Etymograph / Ancient Greek χάος / gas