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English
Etymology
From sour + stuff. Calque of German Sauerstoff (“oxygen”) and/or Dutch zuurstof (“oxygen”), both loose loan translations of French oxygène. See oxygen for more.
Noun
sourstuff (uncountable)
- (chemistry, nonstandard, science fiction, rare) Oxygen.
1887, The Electrical journal, volume 18, page 482:This is approximately the heat of exploding what the Germans call bang-gas (mixture of sourstuff and waterstuff), the result being liquid.
1976, Poul Anderson, Homebrew:For an outshow, the gang of water has two waterstuff unclefts bound to one sourstuff uncleft; the gang of rust has two iron and three sourstuff unclefts; [...]
1997, Poul Anderson, All One Universe, →ISBN:Thus, everyday sourstuff has eight neitherbits with its eight firstbits, but there are also kinds with five, six, seven, nine, ten, and eleven neitherbits. A samestead is known by the tale of both kernel motes, so that we have sourstuff-13, sourstuff-14, and so on, with sourstuff-16 being by far the mostfound.
2013, Harry Turtledove & L. Sprague deCamp, Down in the Bottomlands: And Other Places, →ISBN:“Best you and your thane don your sourstuff masks now, Judge Scoglund,” Ankowaljuu said, returning to English so Park and Dunedin could not misunderstand him.