Definition of "vaporous" []

• Relating to or resembling vapor. (adjective)
• Producing vapors; volatile. (adjective)
• Full of vapors. (adjective)
• Insubstantial, vague, or ethereal: "the imponderable mysterious and vaporous illusions of twilight” ( John C. Powys). See Synonyms at airy. (adjective)
• Extravagantly fanciful; high-flown: vaporous conjecture. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "If I had taken mercury and converted it into vapor (as I could easily do), I should have a perfectly colorless vapor; for you must understand this about vapors, that bodies in what we call the vaporous or the gaseous state are always perfectly transparent, never cloudy or smoky; they are, however, often colored, and we can frequently have colored vapors or gases produced by colorless particles themselves mixing together, as in this case [the lecturer here inverted a glass cylinder full of binoxide of nitrogen (2) over a cylinder of oxygen, when the dark red vapor of hyponitrous acid was produced]."
• "Even far below the critical temperature the molecules have an enormous degree of activity, and tend to fly asunder, maintaining what appears to be a gaseous, but what technically is called a vaporous, condition -- the distinction being that pressure alone suffices to reduce the vapor to the liquid state."
• "The critics have distinguished three periods, or manners, in his work: the cold, the hot, and the "vaporous"."