ether
IPA: ˈiθɝ
noun
- (uncountable, literary or poetic) The substance formerly supposed to fill the upper regions of the atmosphere above the clouds, in particular as a medium breathed by deities.
- (by extension) The medium breathed by human beings; the air.
- (by extension) The sky, the heavens; the void, nothingness.
- (uncountable, physics, historical) Often as aether and more fully as luminiferous aether: a substance once thought to fill all unoccupied space that allowed electromagnetic waves to pass through it and interact with matter, without exerting any resistance to matter or energy; its existence was disproved by the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment and the theory of relativity propounded by Albert Einstein (1879–1955).
- (uncountable, colloquial) 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.
- (uncountable, colloquial) A particular quality created by or surrounding an object, person, or place; an atmosphere, an aura.
- (uncountable, organic chemistry) Diethyl ether (C₄H₁₀O), an organic compound with a sweet odour used in the past as an anaesthetic.
- (countable, organic chemistry) Any of a class of organic compounds containing an oxygen atom bonded to two hydrocarbon groups.
- (uncountable) Starting fluid.
- (Roman mythology) The god-personification of the bright, glowing upper air of heaven. He is the Roman counterpart of Aether.
- (cryptocurrencies) A unit of the Ethereum digital currency, ETH.
- (Mormonism) The ancient American prophet of Mormon theology who wrote the Book of Ether in the Book of Mormon.
- (cryptocurrencies) Alternative letter-case form of Ether [(Roman mythology) The god-personification of the bright, glowing upper air of heaven. He is the Roman counterpart of Aether.]
verb
- (transitive, slang) To viciously humiliate or insult.
- (UK dialectal) Alternative form of edder [(obsolete, transitive) To bind the top of, interweaving edder.]
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Examples of "ether" in Sentences
- And they (ACCU-TIP) do not group as well as the Hornady's in ether rifle.
- The pressures and velocities across my chronograph showed no noticeable changes in ether environment, just pure awesome performance.
- This led to the conception of an imponderable agency capable of certain movements, and to denote this agency the Greek word ether was borrowed.
- All contributors offered their unique talents and their time to this endeavor, and under the guidance of Bram Stoker Award-nominated author Nicholas Kaufmann what was once only in the ether is now in print.
- In his article “Ether,” published in the Encyclopedia Brittanica in the 1870s for all the world to read, the eminent Maxwell simply voiced the shared certainty of the entire physics community: Light was a wave, a wave needed a medium, the medium was called ether.
- Eventually, the digital social network will become such a normal part of our lives that having a profile in the ether is as common and expected as phone numbers in the phone book used to be (in fact, people in their teens and 20s are already more likely to look for a Web profile than even consider looking in a giant paper phone-book).
- In this experiment I suppose the tourmalin to be naturally combined with resinous electric ether like glass; which on one side next towards the fire by the increase of its attractive power, owing to the heat having loosened its combination with the earth of the stone, more strongly attracts vitreous electric ether from the atmosphere; which now stands on its surface: and then as the lower surface of the stone lies in contact with the hearth, the less quantity of vitreous ether is there repelled by the greater quantity of it on the upper surface; while the resinous ether is attracted by it: and the stone is thus charged like a coated jar with vitreous electric ether condensed on one side of it, and resinous on the other.
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