swamp gas
3
5.8
- noun
- /swɑmp ɡæs/
:
gas de pantano
- Scientists often study swamp gas to better understand greenhouse emissions.
And it all ended up being swamp gas or misperceptions of Venus rising or a weather balloon that crashed in New Mexico.
- And it all ended up being swamp gas or misperceptions of Venus rising or a weather balloon that crashed in New Mexico.
Examples
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The old marsh is filled with swamp gas from the decaying plants.
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And when I called the police, they told me it was swamp gas.
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Just some swamp gas.
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Yeah... "swamp gas"...
Blog text (19) -
And it all ended up being swamp gas or misperceptions of Venus rising or a weather balloon that crashed in New Mexico.
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It was some light, some light that refracted off of Venus... ...into some swamp gas, and that's what made the....
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Inflamed swamp gas rolling over the surface of the canals did resemble the flash of cannons.
Fiction book (1995) -
And here and there in the midst of them were clouds of vapor with lights twinkling in them, which may have been living creatures and may have been only clouds of swamp gas.
Fiction book (1995) -
After the heavy rains, we could smell the swamp gas rising from the wetlands.
Synonyms
86
3.4
A gas with no color or smell that burns easily and is used as a fuel
1
3.4
A gas that forms in swamps when plants rot and can burn
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is transparently built from 'swamp' (wetland) + 'gas' (a gaseous substance), so its basic meaning — a gas associated with/swelling from a swamp — is directly derivable from the constituents. This noun–noun composition is a productive, cross-linguistic pattern and not idiomatic, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer the MWE's general meaning (even if the specific chemical identity, e.g. methane, requires extra knowledge).
Etymology
Swamp gas names the gas that comes from a swamp or marsh when dead plants rot in wet ground. This gas is mainly methane and can make bubbles, bad smells, or strange lights, so people called those smells and lights 'swamp gas', and that's why the phrase means the natural gas from swamps and marshes.