different between vapoury vs vapory

English

Alternative forms

• vapory (US)

Etymology

vapour +? -y

Adjective

vapoury (comparative more vapoury, superlative most vapoury)

1. Resembling or characteristic of vapour.
   • 1869, Lewis Carroll, Phantasmagoria, Canto I [1]

     And still he seemed to grow more white, / More vapoury, and wavier— / Seen in the dim and flickering light, / As he proceeded to recite / His “Maxims of Behaviour.”

   • 1921, Lafcadio Hearn, "Karma" in Karma and Other Stories and Essays, London: George G. Harrap & Co., p. 40, [2]

     And those white shapes enfolding her were surely never bridal veils, but vapoury wings that rose above her golden head, and swept down curving to her feet.

   See also quotations under vapory.

2. (archaic) Affected with the vapours; peevish.

English

Alternative forms

• vapoury (UK)

Etymology

From vapor +? -y.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?ve?p??i/

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, [1]

     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, [2]

     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, [3]

     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, [4]

     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.