gas

Rating

gas

[as in ‘gas chamber’]

1. interj. A term of disgust and hatred, implying that gas should be dispensed in generous quantities, thereby exterminating the source of irritation. “Some loser just reloaded the system for no reason! Gas!”

2. interj. A suggestion that someone or something ought to be flushed out of mercy. “The system's getting wedged every few minutes. Gas!”

3. vt. To flush (sense 1). “You should gas that old crufty software.”

4. [IBM] n. Dead space in nonsequentially organized files that was occupied by data that has since been deleted; the compression operation that removes it is called degassing (by analogy, perhaps, with the use of the same term in vacuum technology).

5. [IBM] n. Empty space on a disk that has been clandestinely allocated against future need.