Noun

(organic compound, countable) A compound containing an oxygen atom bonded to two hydrocarbon groups.

(organic compound, uncountable) Diethyl ether (C₄H₁₀O), a compound used as an early anaesthetic.

(ancient philosophy, and, alchemy, uncountable) A classical physical element, considered as prevalent in the heavens and inaccessible to humans. In some versions of alchemy, this was the fifth element in addition to air, earth, fire and water.

(archaic, physics, uncountable) A substance (aether ) once thought to fill all space that allowed electromagnetic waves to pass through it and interact with matter, without exerting any resistance to matter or energy (disproved by Einstein in his Theory of Relativity).

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-14, author=(Jonathan Freedland)

, volume=189, issue=1, page=18, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Obama's once hip brand is now tainted , passage=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.}}

The sky or heavens; the upper air.

Noun

an addiction to ether intoxication

* 1985 Sidney Cohen, The substance abuse problems , volume 2, Routledge, p181

It accounts for the etheromania in certain countries in Ireland over a hundred years ago, the large-scale sniffing of shoemakers’ glue in the prison in Monterrey, Mexico, and for many other epidemics of intoxicant abuse by a large portion of the exposed population.

* 1998 Louis Lewin, Phantastica: a classic survey on the use and abuse of mind-altering plants , Inner Traditions / Bear & Company, p167

It is not considered as becoming in the female sex to consume large quantities of concentrated alcohol habitually, and for this reason women contribute a large contingent to etheromania .