noun

• (uncountable, literary or poetic) The substance formerly supposed to fill the upper regions of the atmosphere above the clouds, in particular as a medium breathed by deities.
  "On Wings the Birds through Æther glide, / And Fiſhes cut with Fins the Tide."
• (uncountable, literary or poetic) The substance formerly supposed to fill the upper regions of the atmosphere above the clouds, in particular as a medium breathed by deities.
  "Take a snapshot of the conflicts around the world: Sunnis vs. Shiites, Israelis vs. Palestinians, Serbs vs. Kosovars, Indians vs. Pakistanis. They seem to be driven by religious hatred. It’s enough to make you wonder if the animosity would melt away if all religions were suddenly, somehow, to vanish into the ether. But James Carse doesn’t see them as religious conflicts at all. To him, they are battles over rival belief systems, which may or may not have religious overtones."
• (uncountable, physics, historical) Often as aether and more fully as luminiferous aether: a substance once thought to fill all unoccupied space that allowed electromagnetic waves to pass through it and interact with matter, without exerting any resistance to matter or energy; its existence was disproved by the 1887 Michelson–Morley experiment and the theory of relativity propounded by Albert Einstein (1879–1955).
  "I ſuppose this æther pervades all groſs bodies, but yet ſo as to ſtand rarer in their pores than in free ſpaces, and ſo much the rarer, as their pores are leſs. And this I ſuppose (with others) to be the cauſe, why light incident on thoſe bodies is refracted towards the perpendicular; […] I ſuppose the rarer æther within bodies, and then denſer without them, not to be terminated in a mathematical ſuperficies, but to grow gradually into one another; […]"
• (uncountable, colloquial) The atmosphere or space as a medium for broadcasting radio and television signals; also, a notional space through which Internet and other digital communications take place; cyberspace.
  "H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness He held some friendly chat with Pabodie over the ether, and repeated his praise of the really marvelous drills that had helped him make his discovery."

verb

• (transitive, slang) To viciously humiliate or insult.
  "The battle rapper ethered his opponent and caused him to slink away in shame."

verb

• (UK dialectal) Alternative form of edder.
  "Ether and Ethers (rhyme to whether)—the operation of running a line of hazle or other flexible wands intertwiningly along the top of a hedge, to keep it more firmly within the hedge-stakes. "Mind you ether it right strong." To "bond" a hedge has the same meaning."

noun

• (cryptocurrencies) Alternative letter-case form of Ether.
  "Gas is not ether–it's a separate virtual currency with its own exchange rate against ether."