vaporous

[vey-per-uhs]

adjective

1. having the form or characteristics of vapor.

   a vaporous cloud.

2. full of or abounding in vapor; foggy; misty.

   a vaporous twilight.

3. producing or giving off vapor.

   a vaporous bog.

4. dimmed or obscured with vapor.

   a low valley surrounded by vaporous mountains.

5. unsubstantial; diaphanous; airy.

   vaporous fabrics; vaporous breezes.

6. vaguely formed, fanciful, or unreliable.

   vaporous promises.

vaporous

/ ˈveɪpərəs, ˌveɪpəˈrɒsɪtɪ /

adjective

1. resembling or full of vapour

2. another word for vaporific

3. lacking permanence or substance; ephemeral or fanciful

4. given to foolish imaginings

5. dulled or obscured by an atmosphere of vapour

Other Word Forms

• vaporously adverb
• vaporousness noun
• vaporosity noun
• nonvaporosity noun
• nonvaporous adjective
• nonvaporously adverb
• nonvaporousness noun
• unvaporosity noun
• unvaporous adjective
• unvaporously adverb
• unvaporousness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of vaporous¹

First recorded in 1520–30; vapor + -ous

Example Sentences

Lady Constance exclaimed, clapping her hands and whirling her skirts in the vaporous air.

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Movie scripts, like vexed suitors, struggle to pin down a vaporous lover.

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In Malofeev’s subjugating hands, Janácek’s vaporously evocative “In the Mists” became “In the Thick, Disorienting and Blinding Fog” and led, without a pause, into Liszt’s doomed and drummed “Funérailles,” creating an extraordinary sonic vista.

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“Whatever’s wrong with me, I will take to bed,” Cain begins in a slow, vaporous falsetto.

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Loftus regarded so-called recovered memories as concoctions “spun not from solid facts but from the vaporous breezes of wishes, dreams, fears, desires.”

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