ether
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: chemistry
natural-sciences
organic-chemistry
physical-sciences
physics
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *h₂eydʰ-der.
Proto-Hellenic *áitʰō
Ancient Greek αἴθω (aíthō)
▲
Ancient Greek ᾱ̓ήρ (āḗr)influ.?
Ancient Greek αἰθήρ (aithḗr)der.
Latin aethērder.
English ether
From Middle English ēther (“the caelum aetherum of ancient cosmology in which the planets orbit; a shining, fluid substance described as a form of air or fire; air”), borrowed from Anglo-Norman ether and Middle French ether, ethere, aether, from Old French aether (“highest and purest part of the atmosphere; medium supposedly filling the upper regions of space”) (modern French éther), or directly from its etymon Latin aethēr (“highest and purest part of the atmosphere; air; heavens, sky; light of day; ethereal matter surrounding a deity”) (note also New Latin aethēr (“chemical compound analogous to diethyl ether”)), from Ancient Greek αἰθήρ (aithḗr, “purer upper air of the atmosphere; heaven, sky; theoretical medium supposed to fill unoccupied space and transmit heat and light”), from αἴθω (aíthō, “to burn, ignite; to blaze, shine”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eydʰ- (“to burn; fire”).
The English word is cognate with Italian ether, ethera (both obsolete), etere, Middle Dutch ether (modern Dutch aether (obsolete), ether), German Äther, Ether, Portuguese éter, Spanish éter.
Inflected forms:
form: ethers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: æther
pos: noun
tags: alternative
UK
dated
obsolete
form: aether
pos: noun
tags: alternative
UK
dated
obsolete
form: aethyr
pos: noun
tags: alternative
archaic
form: ethyr
pos: noun
tags: alternative
archaic
form: ethers
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: ethering
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: ethered
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: ethered
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: The substance formerly supposed to fill the upper regions of the atmosphere above the clouds, in particular as a medium breathed by deities.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
countable
literary
poetic
uncountable
examples: On Wings the Birds through Æther glide, / And Fiſhes cut with Fins the Tide.
Of the mysterious world, that come to me
 From the elements of
 Fire and Earth and Water,
 And the all-nourishing Ether!
gloss: The substance formerly supposed to fill the upper regions of the atmosphere above the clouds, in particular as a medium breathed by deities.
pos: noun
tags: broadly
countable
literary
poetic
uncountable
examples: Take a snapshot of the conflicts around the world: Sunnis vs. Shiites, Israelis vs. Palestinians, Serbs vs. Kosovars, Indians vs. Pakistanis. They seem to be driven by religious hatred. It’s enough to make you wonder if the animosity would melt away if all religions were suddenly, somehow, to vanish into the ether. But James Carse doesn’t see them as religious conflicts at all. To him, they are battles over rival belief systems, which may or may not have religious overtones.
In barely the blink of an eye, the perfectly healthy Judy entered a permanent vegetative state. […] What haunted me was the idea that one moment you’re gazing at your 2-year-old in her playroom and the next, you, the mother, have been whisked off into the ether forever.
There’s a very real chance that, rather than crumbling into the dust and floating off into the ether, Thanos’s victims [in the film Avengers: Infinity War] were actually sucked up into the Soul Stone.
gloss: Often as aether and more fully as luminiferous aether: The hypothetical substance permeating space, functioning as a medium for electromagnetic waves to propagate through, and which does not exert resistance to the movement of matter; its existence is incompatible with Einstein's theory of relativity; famously found to be undetectable by the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment.
pos: noun
tags: historical
uncountable
examples: I ſuppose this æther pervades all groſs bodies, but yet ſo as to ſtand rarer in their pores than in free ſpaces, and ſo much the rarer, as their pores are leſs. And this I ſuppose (with others) to be the cauſe, why light incident on thoſe bodies is refracted towards the perpendicular; […] I ſuppose the rarer æther within bodies, and then denſer without them, not to be terminated in a mathematical ſuperficies, but to grow gradually into one another; […]
Having ſhewn how the Æther cauſes a great part of the Phænomena of Nature, it may be aſked, whence this general material Cauſe has its great Activity and Power? […] This Cauſe muſt be either Matter or Spirit, there being nothing in the Univerſe, which we know if, beſides theſe two. But this Cauſe cannot be Matter: for Matter is in own Nature inert, and has not any Activity in itſelf; and conſequently cannot communicate any Power to the Æther. And therefore the Cauſe, which gives the Æther its Activity and Power, muſt be Spirit. Spirit, which intercedes the Particles of Æther, and gives them a repulſive Power, and ordains and executes the Laws, by which Æther and Bodies act mutually on one another, muſt be preſent in all Parts of Space, where there is Æther.
The whole matter of the univerſe may be divided into atoms and æther. […] The latter, æther, is a ſubtile elaſtic fluid, whoſe particles have a continual tendency to ſeparate or fly off every way, unleſs impreſſed by ſome body: This æther ſurrounds each atom like an atmoſphere, and preſſes equally towards the center of each.
"The ether. The earth browses upon a circular path in the fields of space, and as it moves the ether is continually pouring through it and providing its vitality."
gloss: The atmosphere or space as a medium for broadcasting radio and television signals; also, a notional space through which Internet and other digital communications take place; cyberspace.
pos: noun
tags: colloquial
uncountable
examples: H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
He held some friendly chat with Pabodie over the ether, and repeated his praise of the really marvelous drills that had helped him make his discovery.
Now we are liberal with our innermost secrets, spraying them into the public ether with a generosity our forebears could not have imagined. Where we once sent love letters in a sealed envelope, or stuck photographs of our children in a family album, now such private material is despatched to servers and clouds operated by people we don't know and will never meet.
gloss: A particular quality created by or surrounding an object, person, or place; an atmosphere, an aura.
pos: noun
tags: colloquial
uncountable
examples: The luminous æther of his life was not obſcured by any ſhade dark enough to be denominated a defect.
gloss: Diethyl ether (C₄H₁₀O), an organic compound with a sweet odour used in the past as an anaesthetic.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
examples: But the moſt valuable Qualities of the ÆTHER are it's medicinal ones; it having been found by repeated Experience to be an excellent Remedy in moſt nervous Diſeaſes; particularly in Fits of all ſorts, whether Epileptic, Convulſive, Hyſteric, Hypochondriac, or Paralytic: […]
The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
gloss: Any of a class of organic compounds containing an oxygen atom bonded to two hydrocarbon groups.
pos: noun
tags: countable
examples: M. Malaguti finds that dry chlorine, while acting in the dark upon oxacid æthers, always attacks, and in a uniform manner, the sulphuric æther which is the base of them. […] The action of potash on the compound chloridized æthers is also constant and uniform: the results are always chloride of potassium, acetate of potash, and an organic salt with a base of potash, the acid of which is that which existed in the compound chloridized æther.
When chlorine gas is passed in excess through salicylic ether (salicylae of ethyl) heated over a water-bath, a solid substance is formed which is soluble in hot alcohol, and crystallizes, on cooling, in beautiful colourless tables. This compound is bichloruretted salicylic ether, formed from salicylic ether (C₁₈H₁₀O₆) by the substitution of 2 eq. chlorine for 2 eq. hydrogen: its composition is therefore C₁₈H₈Cl₂O₆.
[…] I allude to the æthers formed by the union of fatty acids with different alcohols. […] With regard to the fatty æthers themselves, I prepared them generally by M. Berthelot's method, by heating the alcohol and the acid for a day at 392°F. in a tube hermetically sealed; the product was mixed with a little æther, and it was digested some time with slaked lime in the water-bath, to separate the free acid from the neutral compound.
An old man to whom a few drops of phosphoric ether had been administered experienced repeated and imperious venereal wants.
gloss: Starting fluid.
pos: noun
tags: uncountable
gloss: To viciously humiliate or insult.
pos: verb
tags: slang
transitive
examples: The battle rapper ethered his opponent and caused him to slink away in shame.
HS Coach Gets Ethered By Girlfriend On FB, Resigns Amid Investigation [article title] […] On Monday, a woman living in Bowling Green, Ky., used her Facebook page to unleash one of the coldest, boyfriend-crushingest Dear John letters you'll ever read.
Cory Barker: Game of Thrones is the easiest answer for me, but MaryAnn [Sleasman] did a fine job of ethering that overrated hunk of junk, so I'm free to take a few shots at Sherlock.
Best of all, [Steven] Soderbergh, a shade queen of our time!!!, slyly ethers James Cameron: […]
On Wednesday, I found myself nodding along vigorously to the latest Kanye West Twitter screed, as this particular iteration included a call for more inclusion at the Grammys and one extremely polite ethering of Macklemore.
Related words: aetherial
aetheric
ethereal
etherealisation
etherealization
etherealise
etherealize
ethereality
ethereally
etherealness
firmament
welkin
Derived words: artemether
crown ether
decabromodiphenyl ether
diether
diethyl ether
dimethyl ether
diphenyl ether
dithioether
etherate
ethereal
ether engine
Ethereum
etherial
etheric
etherical
etherification
etheriform
etherify
etherin
etherise
etherize
etherish
etherism
etherist
etherization
etherlike
ethernet
Ethernet
etherol
etheromania
etheromaniac
etherous
ethery
ethyl ether
ethyl vinyl ether
glycol ether
haloether
hydrofluoroether
iminoether
lariat ether
luminiferous aether
methal
methyl t-butyl ether
methyl tert-butyl ether
methyl tertiary butyl ether
monoether
octabromodiphenyl ether
oligoether
pentabromodiphenyl ether
petroleum ether
phenolether
polyether
polyetheretherketone
polyether ether ketone
polyetherketoneetherketoneketone
polyethersulfone
pyroacetic ether
selenoether
subether
sulfur ether
sulphur ether
tetraether
thetine
thioether
Translations:
lang: Arabic
word: أَثِير
roman: ʔaṯīr
lang: Armenian
word: եթեր
roman: etʻer
lang: Belarusian
word: эфі́р
roman: efír
lang: Bulgarian
word: ефи́р
roman: efír
lang: Bulgarian
word: ете́р
roman: etér
lang: Chinese Mandarin
word: 以太
roman: yǐtài
lang: Czech
word: éter
lang: Danish
word: æter
lang: Dutch
word: ether
lang: Esperanto
word: etero
lang: Finnish
word: eetteri
lang: French
word: éther
lang: Galician
word: éter
lang: Georgian
word: ეთერი
roman: eteri
lang: German
word: Äther
lang: German
word: Ether
lang: Greek
word: αιθέρας
roman: aithéras
lang: Ancient Greek
word: αἰθήρ
roman: aithḗr
lang: Hindi
word: ईथर
roman: īthar
lang: Hindi
word: आकाश
roman: ākāś
lang: Hungarian
word: éter
lang: Icelandic
word: ljósvaki
lang: Italian
word: etere
lang: Japanese
word: エーテル
roman: ēteru
lang: Korean
word: 아이테르
roman: aitereu
lang: Macedonian
word: етер
roman: eter
lang: Manichaean Middle Persian
word: 𐫛𐫡𐫀𐫇𐫍𐫡
roman: frāwahr
lang: Norwegian Bokmål
word: eter
lang: Norwegian Nynorsk
word: eter
lang: Parthian
word: 𐫀𐫡𐫤 𐫛𐫡𐫀𐫇𐫍𐫡
roman: ard frāwahr
lang: Persian
word: اثیر
roman: asir
lang: Polish
word: eter
lang: Portuguese
word: éter
lang: Romanian
word: eter
lang: Russian
word: эфи́р
roman: efír
lang: Sanskrit
word: आकाश
roman: ākāśa
lang: Scottish Gaelic
word: adhar fìnealta
lang: Serbo-Croatian
word: е́тер
lang: Serbo-Croatian
word: éter
lang: Slovak
word: éter
lang: Slovene
word: eter
lang: Spanish
word: éter
lang: Swedish
word: eter
lang: Turkish
word: eter
lang: Turkish
word: esîr
lang: Ukrainian
word: ефі́р
roman: efír
lang: Ukrainian
word: ете́р
roman: etér
lang: Vietnamese
word: ê-te
lang: Welsh
word: ether
lang: Armenian
word: եթեր
roman: etʻer
lang: Belarusian
word: эфі́р
roman: efír
lang: Bulgarian
word: ете́р
roman: etér
lang: Chinese Mandarin
word: 以太
roman: yǐtài
lang: Danish
word: æter
lang: Dutch
word: ether
lang: Esperanto
word: etero
lang: Finnish
word: eetteri
lang: French
word: éther
lang: Galician
word: éter
lang: German
word: Äther
lang: Greek
word: αιθέρας
roman: aithéras
lang: Hindi
word: ईथर
roman: īthar
lang: Hungarian
word: éter
lang: Icelandic
word: ljósvaki
lang: Italian
word: etere
lang: Japanese
word: エーテル
roman: ēteru
lang: Japanese
word: イーサー
roman: īsā
lang: Korean
word: 아이테르
roman: aitereu
lang: Norwegian Bokmål
word: eter
lang: Norwegian Nynorsk
word: eter
lang: Polish
word: eter
lang: Portuguese
word: éter
lang: Romanian
word: eter
lang: Russian
word: эфи́р
roman: efír
lang: Scottish Gaelic
word: adhar fìnealta
lang: Spanish
word: éter
lang: Swedish
word: eter
lang: Ukrainian
word: ефі́р
roman: efír
lang: Ukrainian
word: ете́р
roman: etér
lang: Welsh
word: ether