• (British) IPA: /ˈveɪpə/
• (America) IPA: /ˈveɪpɚ/

vapour

1. Cloudy diffused matter such as mist, steam or fumes suspended in the air.
2. The gaseous state of a substance that is normally a solid or liquid.
3. (obsolete) Wind; flatulence.
4. Something unsubstantial, fleeting, or transitory; unreal fancy; vain imagination; idle talk; boasting.
   • 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), imprinted at London: By Robert Barker, […], OCLC 964384981 ↗, James 4:14 ↗:

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

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. (dated) Any medicinal agent designed for administration in the form of inhaled vapour.

vapour (vapours, present participle vapouring; past and past participle vapoured)

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

   to vapour away a heated fluid

   • 1617, Ben Jonson, Lovers Made Men

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

3. (intransitive) To use insubstantial language; to boast or bluster.
   • 1888, Rudyard Kipling, ‘The Bisara of Pooree’, Plain Tales from the Hills, Folio Society 2005, p. 172:

     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.

   • 1904, Saki, ‘Reginald's Christmas Revel’, Reginald:

     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.

   • 1978, Lawrence Durrell, Livia, Faber & Faber 1992 (Avignon Quintet), p. 513:

     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.

4. To emit vapour or fumes.
   • 1626, Francis Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, Or, A Naturall Historie: In Ten Centuries

     Running waters vapour not so much as standing waters.

5. (transitive) To give (someone) the vapours; to depress, to bore.
   • 1782, Frances Burney, Cecilia, III.vi.9:

     “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 […].”

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