Natural gas is officially 'freedom gas' now, the Department of Energy has decided

Freedom is heating your home, fueling your stove, and, every so often, powering your cars.

Of course by freedom, we mean liquefied natural gas, because the Department of Energy has apparently decided the two unrelated words are now synonyms. The new dictionary entry can be found in a Tuesday DOE press release about natural gas exports, and, as any new definition should, provides multiple examples of how to use "freedom" in a sentence.

With its Tuesday announcement, the DOE officially okayed additional shipments of natural gas to American allies out of Quintana Island, Texas. Those exports are "critical to spreading freedom gas throughout the world" and "giving America's allies a diverse and affordable source of clean energy," as Under Secretary of Energy Mark Menezes put it in the release. Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy Steven Winberg, meanwhile, praised the DOE for letting "molecules of U.S. freedom" traverse the globe.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

It's unclear why the DOE is making such a bold change to a term that has been widely accepted for decades. But at least we're all clear that this new terminology isn't what humans experience after eating too many freedom fries.