Also æther. [a. L. æther, ad. Gr. αἰθήρ (in senses 1–3 below), f. root of αἴθ-ειν to kindle, burn, shine; cf. αἴθρα fair weather, f. same root.
The spelling æther is still not uncommon in senses 1–3, and occasionally occurs in sense 5. In the chemical sense 6 ether is the only form recognized by good authorities.]
I. Senses adopted from Greek (orig. through Latin; but now often used with direct reminiscence of passages in Gr. classic authors).
1. The clear sky; the upper regions of space beyond the clouds; the medium filling the upper regions of space, as the air fills the lower regions. Now poet. or rhetorical.
1586. Golding, De Mornay, ix. 139. What will hee answere to Plato, who saith that the Heauen or Skye is called Æther.
1718. Pope, Iliad, XVI. 361, IV. 1225. All th’ unmeasur’d Æther flames with Light.
1790. Cowper, Iliad, XIX. 523/430. Through æther down she darted.
1813. Scott, Trierm., III. xxv. The wizard song at distance died, As if in ether borne astray.
1855. Longf., Hiaw., XVII. 236. The people … Saw the wings of Pau-Puk-Keewis Flapping far up in the ether.
1871. R. Ellis, Catullus, lxiv. 62/206. The ruffled Ocean shook, and stormy the stars ’gan tremble in ether.
b. As the element breathed by the gods; ‘diviner air.’
1733. Pope, Ess. Man, III. 8/115. Whate’er of Life all quickening Æther keeps,… one Nature feeds The vital Flame.
1848. Clough, Amours de Voy., I. 4. A land wherein gods of the old time wandered, Where every breath even now changes to ether divine.
2. In ancient cosmological speculation conceived as an element filling all space beyond the sphere of the moon, and as the constituent substance of the stars and planets and of their spheres. The earliest Eng. use; now only Hist.
It was variously regarded as a purer form of fire or of air, or as differing in kind from all the ‘four elements.’ By some it was supposed to be the constituent substance, or one of the constituents, of the soul.
1398. Trevisa, Barth. De P. R., VIII. v. (Addit. MS. 27944, fol. 107). Isidor seiþ þe ouere parties of fuyre & of ayer hatte Ether.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., 16. From the æther was made the heavens. Ibid., 493. The Pagans answer thus … we call God in the Æther Jupiter.
1695. Bp. Patrick, Comm. Gen., i. 7. The thinner parts … made the æther, or higher firmament, wherein the sun and the planets are seated.
3. Air; respirable fluid.
1713. Guardian, No. 44, ¶ 9. They sucked in so condensed and poisonous an Æther.
1809. Pinkney, Trav. France, 277. His senses are hailed … by the freshness of a pure æther.
II. Senses of modern development.
† 4. As a general name for extremely subtle fluids, the existence of which was imagined or inferred; = AURA 2, 3. Obs.
1691. E. Taylor, Behmen’s Theos. Philos., xvi. 22. The Elements themselves pass into their Ethers.
1757. Darwin, Vapour, in Phil. Trans., L. 252. There was no real opposition in the electric æther of glass, and that from wax.
fig. 1791. Boswell, Johnson, 1 July an. 1763. My mind was … strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian æther.
5. mod. Physics. A substance of great elasticity and subtilty, believed to permeate the whole of planetary and stellar space, not only filling the interplanetary spaces, but also the interstices between the particles of air and other matter on the earth; the medium through which the waves of light are propagated. Sometimes called the luminiferous ether. Also attrib., as in ether-strain, -vibration, -wave.
1644. Digby, Nat. Bodies, xxxii. 281. The Ether … like an immense Ocean, tossed with all varieties of motion.
1692. Bentley, Boyle Lect., 226. These Phænomena are produced either by the intervention of Air or Æther or other such medium, that communicates the impulse from one Body to another.
1704. Newton, Opticks (1721), 326 (J.). Æther (like our Air) may contain Particles which endeavour to recede from one another.
1778. Dict. Arts & Sc., Æther, an imaginary fluid, supposed by several authors, both ancient and modern, to be the cause of gravity, heat, light, muscular motion, and, in a word, of every phænomenon in nature…. Perrault represents it as 7200 times more rare than air; and Hook makes it more dense than gold itself.
1831. Brewster, Newton (1855), I. vi. 134. Descartes was the first philosopher who maintained the existence of an ether, a medium more subtle than air, filling the interstices of air.
1872. Huxley, Physiol., ix. 219. The vibrations of ether … constitute the physical basis of light.
1878. B. Taylor, Deukalion, III. iii. 109. Our dark orb Drinks light from ether till it grows a star.
attrib. 1879. G. Allen, Col. Sense, i. 2. We must find out how the various modes of æther-waves … came originally to be distinguished from one another.
1884. trans. Lotze’s Metaph., III. iii. 475. We cannot conceive any reason why a soul that feels ether-waves as colours must, in consistency, perceive air-waves as sounds.
b. fig.
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res. (1858), 33. WE are—we know not what;—light-sparkles floating in the æther of Deity!
1835. I. Taylor, Spir. Despot., viii. 352. Measures which would have reduced the papal authority out of Italy to a thin ether visible to none but the clergy.
a. 1849. Poe, Poems, Ulalume. She rolls through an ether of sighs.
6. Chem. a. The colorless, light, volatile liquid, (C4 H10 O) resulting from the action of sulphuric and other acids upon alcohol, whence it was also known as Sulphuric, Phosphoric, etc., ether. In popular and commercial use the incorrect name ‘sulphuric ether’ is still common, and the term ‘ether’ without prefixed word is ordinarily understood to refer to this substance, which in technical nomenclature is now distinguished as Common, Ethylic, or Vinic ether, or Ethyl oxide. It is an anæsthetic, and capable of producing extreme cold by its evaporation. Also attrib.
1757. Lewis, in Phil. Trans., L. 161. The subtile fluid, prepared from vinous spirits with the vitriolic acid, called by the chemists æther.
1794. Pearson, ibid. LXXXIV. 389. Fifty grains of white lac readily dissolved in 500 grains measure of sulphuric æther.
1860. Piesse, Lab. Chem. Wonders, 82. A solution of gold in æther applied to the surface of fine polished steel instruments gilds them.
1875. Ure, Dict. Arts, II. 309. s.v., A duty of 1l. 5s. per gallon was fixed on sulphuric ether on the 25th September 1862.
1877. Roberts, Handbk. Med. (ed. 3), I. 63. Ether dissolves the fat and brings the striæ again into view.
attrib. 1872. H. Spencer, Princ. Psychol., I. V. x. 611. Æther-narcosis produces the loss of 1. The local sensibility of extreme parts … 2. The intellectual powers.
1873. J. P. Cooke, New Chem., 18. And the globe will hold just as much ether-vapor as if neither of the other two were present.
1879. H. Spencer, Data of Ethics, x. § 64. 177. By ether-spray it [an external part of the body] is made very cold.
b. Hence by extension, the generic name of a large class of compounds, formed by the action of acids upon alcohols, divided into (1) Simple ethers, of which the above Common Ether is the type, and which comprise the oxides, sulphides, chlorides, etc., of alcohol radicals. (2) Compound ethers, in which the hydrogen of the hydroxyl of an alcohol is replaced by an acid-radical.
1838. T. Thomson, Chem. Org. Bodies, 324. Sulphuric ether … possesses the characters of a base, being capable of neutralizing various (probably all) acids…. These new compounds are at present very inaccurately termed ethers.
1850. Daubeny, Atom. The., viii. (ed. 2), 257. An ether … bearing the same relation to fusel oil, which sulphuric ether does to alcohol.
1877. Watts, Fownes’ Chem., II. 110. In the polyatomic alcohols, two hydroxyl groups may also be replaced by one atom of oxygen, giving rise to another class of oxygen ethers. The replacement of the hydrogen of the hydroxyl in an alcohol by acid radicles produces ethereal salts or compound ethers.
