[vey-per] 
| 1. | a visible exhalation, as fog, mist, steam, smoke, or noxious gas, diffused through or suspended in the air: the vapors rising from the bogs. |
| 2. | Physics. a gas at a temperature below its critical temperature. |
| 3. | a substance converted into vapor for technical or medicinal uses. |
| 4. | a combination of a vaporized substance and air. |
| 5. | gaseous particles of drugs that can be inhaled as a therapeutic agent. |
| 6. | Archaic.
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| 7. | vapors, Archaic.
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| 8. | to cause to rise or pass off in, or as if in, vapor; vaporize. |
| 9. | Archaic. to affect with vapors; depress. |
| 10. | to rise or pass off in the form of vapor. |
| 11. | to emit vapor or exhalations. |
| 12. | to talk or act grandiloquently, pompously, or boastfully; bluster. |
vapor va·por (vā'pər)
n.
Barely visible or cloudy diffused matter, such as mist, fumes, or smoke, suspended in the air.
The state of a substance that exists below its critical temperature and that may be liquefied by application of sufficient pressure.
The gaseous state of a substance that is liquid or solid under ordinary conditions.
The vaporized form of a medicinal preparation to be administered by inhalation.
A mixture of a vapor and air, as an explosive mixture of gasoline and air burned in an internal-combustion engine.
vapors Exhalations within an organ, especially the stomach, supposed to affect the mental or physical condition. No longer in technical use.
vapors A nervous disorder such as depression or hysteria. No longer in technical use.
vapor (vā'pər) Pronunciation Key
vaporize verb Our Living Language : The words vapor and steam usually call to mind a fine mist, such as that in the jet of water droplets near the spout of a boiling teakettle or in a bathroom after a shower. Vapor and steam, however, refer to the gaseous state of a substance. The fumes that arise when volatile substances such as alcohol and gasoline evaporate, for example, are vapors. The visible stream of water droplets rushing out of a teakettle spout is not steam. As the gaseous state of water heated past its boiling point, steam is invisible. Usually, there is a space of an inch or two between the spout and the beginning of the stream of droplets. This space contains steam. The steam loses its heat to the surrounding air, then falls below the boiling point and condenses in the air as water droplets. All liquids and solids give off vapors consisting of molecules that have evaporated from the substance. In a closed system, the vapor pressure of these molecules reaches an equilibrium at which the substance evaporates from the liquid (or solid) and recondenses on it in equal amounts. |