vaporize
Americanverb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
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to become converted into vapor.
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to indulge in boastful talk; speak braggingly.
verb
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to change or cause to change into vapour or into the gaseous state
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to evaporate or disappear or cause to evaporate or disappear, esp suddenly
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to destroy or be destroyed by being turned into a gas as a result of extreme heat (for example, generated by a nuclear explosion)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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vaporizesimple
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vaporizessimple
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have vaporizedperfect
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has vaporizedperfect
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am vaporizingprogressive
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are vaporizingprogressive
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is vaporizingprogressive
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have been vaporizingperfect progressive
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has been vaporizingperfect progressive
Past
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vaporizedsimple
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had vaporizedperfect
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was vaporizingprogressive
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were vaporizingprogressive
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had been vaporizingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of vaporize
Explanation
To vaporize is to evaporate and turn into gas. If you're watching a sci-fi movie, it probably means to vanish quickly or be utterly obliterated by a phaser gun. As the structure of the word suggests, vaporize means "turn into vapor." Sometimes this means just turning into gas, like when boiling water turns into steam and rises into the atmosphere. Other times, something more concentrated is left behind, like when maple sap is boiled down into syrup. And in the greenhouse (or grocery store produce section), to vaporize is also to spray your green things with a light coating of mist.
Vocabulary lists containing vaporize
Cosmos
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"The Hunger Games," Chapter 2 Vocabulary
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Locomotion
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“You don’t often watch a company vaporize in front of your eyes,” he told me.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026
During a massive impact, temperatures soar, allowing potassium to vaporize and its isotopes to separate.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 8, 2026
This robotic mission is designed to search for volatiles, which are molecules that easily vaporize, like water and carbon dioxide, at lunar temperatures.
From Salon ● Dec. 29, 2023
The compressed air starts to glow, and when it reaches a temperature of about 2,000 degrees Celsius, the solid material in the meteoroid starts to vaporize.
From Scientific American ● Sep. 8, 2023
The eyeless creature at the other table swallowed it fanatically, passionately, with a furious desire to track down, denounce, and vaporize anyone who should suggest that last week the ration had been thirty grams.
From "1984" by George Orwell
As temperatures fall, less ice vaporizes from the surface and near-surface layers.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2026
When a single research report vaporizes hundreds of billions in market cap, institutional investors have already modeled their own displacement.
From MarketWatch ● Mar. 19, 2026
The chase scenes are shot with cool colors and shadows, but the tension vaporizes soon as you realize that the killer can pop up anywhere, untethered by logic or physics.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 5, 2025
Patagonia is collecting end-of-life wet suits for a partner that vaporizes them to reclaim what’s known as carbon black, a key ingredient in neoprene and in the natural rubber Patagonia uses.
From Seattle Times ● May 12, 2024
It's a sullen, vindictive cold outside, colder than it's been in months, and my breath vaporizes as we hurry along the canal.
From "Girl in the Blue Coat" by Monica Hesse
"Only a minute fraction of the projectile is preserved in the planet's KT clay layer because the entire meteorite vaporized upon impact."
From Science Daily ● Jul. 19, 2026
They worry that launch emissions and vaporized space junk could damage the ozone layer and interfere with the atmosphere’s complex chemistry in other ways.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
Other human remains found elsewhere in Herculaneum had iron oxide deposits in the skull, suggesting that the fluids in the skull were vaporized by the heat, leaving only traces of degraded heme proteins.
From Salon ● Mar. 4, 2025
“There’s another element there that I think is the key element, and that is an agreed upon hierarchy, which I think is absolutely vaporized in today’s moment,” he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 30, 2024
And everything vaporized into the nameless chaos of my twenty-miles-per-second universe.
From "100 Sideways Miles" by Andrew Smith
In January 2002, Global Crossing filed for bankruptcy, vaporizing tens of billions in market value.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 19, 2025
It does sound magical that a human being could turn into glass, but far better if studying the Guardian can prevent vaporizing, volatilization and vitrification — or saponification — of anyone else.
From Salon ● Mar. 4, 2025
The massive machine uses deep-learning AI models to scan fields and identify weeds in real time before vaporizing them with more than 30 high-powered lasers, all while protecting the crop.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 22, 2024
However, the tails of comets are usually formed by vaporizing ice and carbon dioxide, which cannot explain this tail.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 28, 2023
She zipped it to my phone with a patch that I opened first to prevent the worm from vaporizing my hard drive.
From "Burning Blue" by Paul Griffin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
