vapor

noun

1. (US, countable, uncountable)Cloudy diffused matter such as mist, steam or fumes suspended in the air.

   “The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom.[…]Drifts of yellow vapour, fiery, parching, stinging, filled the air.”

2. (US, countable, uncountable)The gaseous state of a substance that is normally a solid or liquid.

   “Surprisingly, this analysis revealed that acute exposure to solvent vapors at concentrations below those associated with long-term effects appears to increase the risk of a fatal automobile accident. Furthermore, this increase in risk is comparable to the risk of death from leukemia after long-term exposure to benzene, another solvent, which has the well-known property of causing this type of cancer.”

3. (US, countable, idiomatic, uncountable)Something insubstantial, fleeting, or transitory; unreal fancy; vain imagination; idle talk; boasting.

   “For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”

   “I am at this present very sick of my little vapour of fame.”

   “The press operates as a safety-valve for the vapor of popular ebullision.”

   “The previous question had turned the attention to life as something peculiarly frail, and as of such a nature that no calculation could be based on its permanence. This expression gives a reason for that, to wit, that it is a mere vapor.”

   “Here we can explain only in these broad outlines why the asking of the question of being is in itself through and through historical, and why, accordingly, our question as to whether being will remain a mere vapor for us or become the destiny of the West is anything but an exaggeration and a rhetorical figure.”

4. (US, countable, dated, uncountable)Any medicinal agent designed for administration in the form of inhaled vapour.

   “Sulphurous fumes have also been recommended, as well as diffusing a variety of vapors in the apartment of the patient; on their beneficial or injurious effects we are unable to speak.”

   “Hence the vapor, so useful in expanding the compressed tissues and enabling the air to permeate and expand the contracted parenchyma in consumption, causes a sensation of great fatigue in asthma.”

   “Professor Matthews has at length the pleasure, after much unaboidable delay, of respectfully announcin to the Faculty, that he is prepared to fill their prescriptions by any practicable formula, in the use of his new method of applying medicinal vapors to the lungs, air-passages, & c., by means of the Multiform Fumigator .”

   “The physician can now prescribe medicinal vapors to be dropped on some cotton placed inside the inhaler.”

5. (US, archaic, countable, in-plural, uncountable)Hypochondria; melancholy; the blues; hysteria, or other nervous disorder.

   “Jan 13, 1732, John Arbuthnot, letter to Jonathan Swift He talks me into a fit of vapours twice or thrice a week.”

   “She made several gulps and controlled her breath. She released her grip on Podson and stared at him without recognition. Podson went on patting her reassuringly, relieved from administering first aid to an attack of the vapours.”

   “"Shows you what a modern young woman can come to after all, doesn't it? Screaming, and collapsing with the vapours - Hell!"”

6. (US, countable, obsolete, uncountable)Wind; flatulence.

   “The surcharge of the stomack from a gross vapour, and from the poise of some outward weight, are alike”

verb

1. (US, intransitive)To become vapor; to be emitted or circulated as vapor.
2. (US, transitive)To turn into vapor.

   “to vapor away a heated fluid”

   “He'd […]laugh to see one throw his heart away, / Another, sighing, vapour forth his soul.”

3. (US)To emit vapor or fumes.

   “Running waters vapour not so much as standing waters.”

4. (US, intransitive)To use insubstantial language; to boast or bluster.

   “He vapoured, and fretted, and fumed, and trotted up and down, and tried to make himself pleasing in Miss Hollis's big, quiet, grey eyes, and failed.”

   “then the Major gave us a graphic account of a struggle he had with a wounded bear. I privately wished that the bears would win sometimes on these occasions; at least they wouldn't go vapouring about it afterwards.”

   “[…] an amusing character all but extinct now, but occasionally to be encountered […] vaporing in the groggeries along the tow-path.”

   “He felt he would start vapouring with devotion if this went on, so he bruptly took his leave with a cold expression on his face which dismayed her for she thought that it was due to distain for her artistic opinions.”

5. (US, transitive)To give (someone) the vapors; to depress, to bore.

   ““I only mean,” cried she, giddily, “that he might have some place a little more pleasant to live in, for really that old moat and draw-bridge are enough to vapour him to death […].””