English

Alternative forms

• vapoury (UK)

Adjective

vapory ‎(comparative more vapory, superlative most vapory)

1. Resembling vapor; vaporous.]
   • 1792, William Pine, General Proofs that the Second Advent of the Lord hath Taken Place, and also, the Essential Doctrines of His New Kingdom Stated, Bristol: self-published, p. 14,

     But here again, Christians consider the word literally, as though the Lord would appear upon the vapory clouds over our heads.

   • 1800, Rosewell Messenger, A Sermon Preached at the Ordination of the Rev. James Boyd at Bangor on Penobscot River, September 10, 1800, pp. 24-5,

     The greatest damps however, that may ever roll upon your spirits, will arise from the stupidity of sinners, and the vapory dullness of declining Christians.

   • 1858, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish, I, 54-55,

     Long at the window he stood, and wistfully gazed on the landscape, / Washed with a cold gray mist, the vapory breath of the east-wind,

   • 1924, Herman Melville, Billy Budd, London: Constable & Co., Chapter 22,

     At the same moment it chanced that the vapory fleece hanging low in the East, was shot thro' with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, […]

   • See also quotations under vapoury.
2. Characterized by the presence of vapor; full of, or obscured by, vapor.
   • 1835, Edgar Allan Poe, ‘King Pest’:

     The most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere prevailed; and by the aid of that ghastly light which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapory and pestilential atmosphere, might be discerned lying in the by-paths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of his robbery.