gas

What it means

1. 1.

   Funny, entertaining. Of a person it means they are good company and make you laugh; of a situation it means it was absurd.

2. 2.

   As a noun with the article: 'it was a gas', an enjoyable bit of nonsense.

In use

• Your granny is gas, she had us all in stitches.

• It's gas the way he never answers a question.

  Note: Often mildly critical — gas can mean 'strange enough to be funny'.

Where it comes from

From nitrous oxide, laughing gas, which gave nineteenth-century English 'a gas' for something hilarious. Ireland kept the adjective use long after it dropped out elsewhere, and unlike American 'a gas' it is fully current rather than dated here.

First attested: 19th century