a. Also 6 vaporie, 8–9 U.S. vapory; 7–8 vap’ry. [f. VAPOUR sb. + -Y.]
1. Of the nature or consistency of vapor; composed of, or caused by, vapor.
1598. Sylvester, Du Bartas, II. i. Furies, 262. The heat, hidden in a vapoury Cloud, Striving for issue.
1598. Drayton, Heroical Ep., Ros. to Hen. II. (1605), M 4.
| The waxen taper which I burne by night, | |
| With his dull vapory dimnesse mocks my sight. |
1608. Topsell, Serpents (1658), 748. A vapoury adherency … which flyeth from the strokes of hammers upon hot burning iron.
1727–46. Thomson, Summer, 1724. They see the blazing wonder rise anew…: From his huge vapoury train perhaps to shake Reviving moisture.
1770. Langhorne, Plutarch (1851), II. 1039/1. The vapoury steam is diffused over the surface of the body.
1805–6. Cary, Dante, Inf., XXV. 84. One from the wound, the other from the mouth Breathed a thick smoke, whose vapoury columns join’d.
1824. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. I. (1863), 77. The clouds have gathered into one thick low canopy, dark and vapoury as the smoke which overhangs London.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., I. xvi. 106. The Jungfrau … had wrapped her vapoury veil around her.
1885. Manch. Exam., 9 Sept., 5/3. Inside the body … it is suggested that there resides a kind of vapoury form which animates it.
transf. 1748. Thomson, Cast. Indol., I. lxxii. On the couch … they sighing lie reclin’d, And court the vapoury god soft-breathing in the wind.
Comb. 1796. Townshend, Poems, 65. Who wak’st the vap’ry-skirted vale To songful life.
b. fig. Unsubstantial, indefinite, vague.
1818. Blackw. Mag., II. 396. My love-fever’d spirit evolves A fair vapoury vision.
1848. Mill, Pol. Econ., III. vii. § 3. (1876), 297. The mass of vapoury and baseless speculation with which this … has in latter times become surrounded.
1874. T. Hardy, Far fr. Mad. Crowd, I. xxii. 254. His readings of her seemed now to be vapoury and indistinct.
2. Rendered dim or obscure by the presence of vapor.
1818. Keats, Endym., IV. 483. Leaving old Sleep within his vapoury lair.
1845. Ford, Handbk. Spain, I. 474. The vapory distant hills and the blue sea peep through vistas … of the pines.
1878. T. Hardy, Ret. Native, III. vi. The yellow and vapoury sunset … had presaged change.
3. = VAPOURISH a. 2. rare–1.
1771. J. Adams, Diary, 5 June, Wks. 1850, II. 269. Thirty people have been here to-day, they say;—the halt, the lame, the vapory, hypochondriac, scrofulous, &c. all resort here.
