What does degas mean?
To degas something is to remove gas from it — specifically, dissolved or trapped gases within a liquid or solid. The word belongs chiefly to the vocabulary of science and industry: chemists degas solvents before sensitive reactions, because even tiny bubbles of oxygen can spoil an experiment; manufacturers of beverages, polymers, and molten metals degas their materials to ensure purity and structural integrity. Degassing can be achieved by heating, applying a vacuum, sonication, or bubbling through an inert gas such as nitrogen or argon. Though unglamorous, the procedure is essential wherever air bubbles would compromise results — from high-performance liquid chromatography to epoxy casting. In everyday speech the word is rare, but anyone reading a laboratory protocol will meet it early and often.
verbTo remove dissolved or trapped gas from a liquid or substance, typically by heating, vacuum treatment, or other technical means.
- To remove dissolved or entrained gas from a liquid or material, especially in laboratory or industrial contexts.
"The chemist degassed the solvent under vacuum before beginning the reaction."
"The sample was degassed for ten minutes to eliminate air bubbles before spectroscopic analysis."
"Molten metal must be carefully degassed to prevent porosity in the finished casting."
Chemists spend their days doing what a French painter's name sounds like — and every bottle of ultra-pure HPLC solvent has been properly degassed.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of degas
The verb "degas" is formed transparently from the prefix "de-" (meaning removal) plus "gas," the noun famously coined by the Flemish chemist Jan Baptist van Helmont in the seventeenth century, who derived it from the Greek word "chaos." As scientific understanding of dissolved gases developed, English speakers applied the productive de- prefix to create this technical verb, which became established in laboratory and industrial usage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
How degas is actually used
"Degas" is primarily a technical term used in chemistry, physics, food science, and metallurgy; it is rarely encountered in everyday conversation. It is most often found in passive constructions such as "the solution was degassed."
Easily confused with degas
Capitalized, 'Degas' refers to Edgar Degas, the nineteenth-century French Impressionist painter, whereas the lowercase verb 'degas' means to remove gas from a substance.