vaporous
Americanadjective
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having the form or characteristics of vapor.
a vaporous cloud.
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full of or abounding in vapor; foggy; misty.
a vaporous twilight.
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producing or giving off vapor.
a vaporous bog.
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dimmed or obscured with vapor.
a low valley surrounded by vaporous mountains.
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unsubstantial; diaphanous; airy.
vaporous fabrics; vaporous breezes.
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vaguely formed, fanciful, or unreliable.
vaporous promises.
adjective
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resembling or full of vapour
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another word for vaporific
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lacking permanence or substance; ephemeral or fanciful
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given to foolish imaginings
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dulled or obscured by an atmosphere of vapour
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Etymology
Origin of vaporous
Explanation
Vaporous means foggy, or made of gas. On a misty morning, the cool, vaporous air by the sea might send you back home for a raincoat. In science, this adjective is used for gases, including the vaporous water detected in the atmosphere of a distant planet, or the invisible swirl of vaporous wax that hovers above a lit candle. When the air feels vaporous, it's either foggy or extremely humid. Something that seems to lack real substance can also be described this way, like your vaporous plan to bike across the U.S., quickly abandoned as you realized how difficult it would be.
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.
It switches between a ghostly, vaporous beat and a hectic middle passage filled with sampled and pitched-up voices and clattering percussion.
From The Wall Street Journal • May 19, 2026
Loftus regarded so-called recovered memories as concoctions “spun not from solid facts but from the vaporous breezes of wishes, dreams, fears, desires.”
From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 7, 2024
Hope needed a name and a shape, and what followed was anything but vaporous feelings.
From Slate • Jul. 31, 2024
"We let the biology do the harder job of converting information about vaporous chemicals into an electrical neural signal," Raman said.
From Science Daily • Jan. 26, 2024
Nels, flailing, his breath issuing forth in vaporous grunts, had broken out the ice with the handle of his toilet plunger, propped himself against the wall—his lumbago plagued him mercilessly—and dribbled night water unsteadily.
From "Snow Falling on Cedars: A Novel" by David Guterson
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.
