vapor

Etymology

From Middle English vapour, from Anglo-Norman vapour, Old French vapor, from Latin vapor (“steam, heat”).

noun

1. 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. 1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid
2. 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. 2013 July-August, Philip J. Bushnell, “Solvents, Ethanol, Car Crashes & Tolerance”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)
3. Something insubstantial, fleeting, or transitory; unreal fancy; vain imagination; idle talk; boasting.
   I am at this present very sick of my little vapour of fame. 1781, Horace Walpole, " "
   The press operates as a safety-valve for the vapor of popular ebullision. 1822, Charles Perkins, An Oration, page 19
   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. 1875, Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the General Epistles of James, Peter, John, and Jude, page 80
   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. 1999, Martin Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, page 50
4. (dated) 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. 1836, Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis, Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Charles Cowan, Pathological Researches on Phthisis, page 287
   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. 1854 November, Samuel A. Cartwright, “The Case of a Lady in a sugar-house, with Aphonic, Haemorrhagic, Tubercular Phthisis in the Softening State”, in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, volume 51, number 14, page 275
   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 . 1861, Charles Mathews, On fumigation of the lungs, throat, &c, page 1
   The physician can now prescribe medicinal vapors to be dropped on some cotton placed inside the inhaler. 1944, Quarterly Review of Otorhinolaryngology and Broncho-esophagology, page 68
5. (archaic, in the plural) 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.
6. (obsolete) Wind; flatulence.

verb

1. (intransitive) To become vapor; to be emitted or circulated as vapor.
2. (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. 1617, Ben Jonson, Lovers Made Men
3. To emit vapor or fumes.
4. (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. 1888, Rudyard Kipling, “The Bisara of Pooree”, in Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio Society, published 2005, page 172
   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. 1904, “Saki”, ‘Reginald's Christmas Revel’, Reginald
   […] an amusing character all but extinct now, but occasionally to be encountered […] vaporing in the groggeries along the tow-path. 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 1, in Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co.
   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. 1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia (Avignon Quintet), Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 513
5. (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 […].” 1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, III.vi.9