VAPOUR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does vapour mean? 

• VAPOUR (noun)
  The noun VAPOUR has 2 senses:

1. a visible suspension in the air of particles of some substance

2. the process of becoming a vapor

  Familiarity information: VAPOUR used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VAPOUR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A visible suspension in the air of particles of some substance

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Synonyms:

vapor; vapour

Hypernyms ("vapour" is a kind of...):

suspension (a mixture in which fine particles are suspended in a fluid where they are supported by buoyancy)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vapour"):

steam (water at boiling temperature diffused in the atmosphere)

water vapor; water vapour (water in a vaporous form diffused in the atmosphere but below boiling temperature)

Sense 2

Meaning:

The process of becoming a vapor

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural processes

Synonyms:

evaporation; vapor; vaporisation; vaporization; vapour

Hypernyms ("vapour" is a kind of...):

phase change; phase transition; physical change; state change (a change from one state (solid or liquid or gas) to another without a change in chemical composition)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "vapour"):

boiling (the application of heat to change something from a liquid to a gas)

clouding; clouding up (the process whereby water particles become visible in the sky)

smoke; smoking (a hot vapor containing fine particles of carbon being produced by combustion)

 Context examples 

They detected a strong signature of iron vapour at the evening border that separates the planet’s day side from its night side.

(ESO Telescope Observes Exoplanet Where It Rains Iron, ESO)

The team reported the abundance of water vapour in 14 of the 19 planets, and the abundance of sodium and potassium in six planets each.

(Water common – yet scarce – in exoplanets, University of Cambridge)

The chill and the vapour taken together told a poor tale of the island.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Hence one would expect the effects of the poison to be less than in the second case, where there was less escape for the vapour.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Sublimation is a process through which ice turns directly into water vapour without melting into a liquid first.

(Icy Warning for Space Missions to Jupiter's Moon, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

These frequencies of light interact much more strongly with water vapour and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere which affects the climate that emerges in the model.

(Simulations show planet orbiting Proxima Centauri could have liquid water, Wikinews)

I lifted up my head to look: the roof resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapours she is about to sever.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

From the windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like a great vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through it.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The moonlight suddenly failed, as a great black cloud sailed across the sky; and when the gaslight sprang up under Quincey's match, we saw nothing but a faint vapour.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

Besides, as it is in the power of the monarch to raise the island above the region of clouds and vapours, he can prevent the falling of dews and rain whenever he pleases.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)