different between wetness vs vapour

English

Etymology

From Middle English wetnes, wetnesse, from Old English w?tnes (“moisture, wetness”), equivalent to wet +? -ness.

Pronunciation

• (UK, US) IPA^(key): /?w?t.n?s/

Noun

wetness (usually uncountable, plural wetnesses)

1. The condition of being wet.
   • 1823, Walter Scott, Quentin Durward, Chapter 3,^[1]

     The young man looked long and fixedly on the place, the sight of which interested him so much that he had forgotten, in the eagerness of youthful curiosity, the wetness of his dress.

   • 1864, Henry David Thoreau, The Maine Woods, “Ktaadn,”^[2]

     The first business was to make a fire, an operation which was a little delayed by the wetness of the fuel and the ground, owing to the heavy showers of the afternoon.

   • Adult disposable diapers with wetness indicator.
2. Moisture.
   • 1864 George MacDonald, The Light Princess, Chapter 8,^[3]

     “Oh! if I had my gravity,” thought she, contemplating the water, “I would flash off this balcony like a long white sea-bird, headlong into the darling wetness. Heigh-ho!”

   • 1958, Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, London: Heinemann, Chapter Four,

     And so nature was not interfered with in the middle of the rainy season. Sometimes it poured down in such thick sheets of water that earth and sky seemed merged in one grey wetness.

3. Rainy or damp weather.
   • 1797, Tobias Smollett et al., The History of England, from the Revolution to the End of the American War and the Peace of Versailles in 1783, Philadelphia: Robert Campbell, Volume 4, Book 5, p. 484,^[4]

     They complained, that the wetness of the season, and the scarcity of fodder in the year 1762, with other natural causes, had reduced the quantity of fat cattle, by discouraging the farmers from rearing them.

   • 1941, Emily Carr, Klee Wyck, Chapter 4,^[5]

     Tanoo, Skedans and Cumshewa lie fairly close to each other on the map, yet each is quite unlike the others when you come to it. All have the West Coast wetness but Cumshewa seems always to drip, always to be blurred with mist, its foliage always to hang wet-heavy.

Antonyms

• dryness

Translations

Anagrams

• westens

English

Noun

vapour (countable and uncountable, plural vapours)

1. British standard spelling of vapor.

Verb

vapour (third-person singular simple present vapours, present participle vapouring, simple past and past participle vapoured)

1. British standard spelling of vapor.

Middle English

Etymology 1

Borrowed from Anglo-Norman vapour, from Latin vapor.

Alternative forms

• vapor, wapour, vapoure, vapur

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /va??pu?r/, /va?pu?r/, /?va?pur/

Noun

vapour (plural vapours)

1. Fumes or vapour; a visible gaseous emission:
   1. A visible vapour; steam
   2. The vapour of water; mist.
   3. Fumes given off by combustion; smoke.
2. Heated air; air of a high temperature.
3. (physiology) A noxious bodily fume believed to be the cause of maladies.
4. (rare) A airborne smell; a nasal sensation transmitted via the air.
5. (rare) Effect, emanation.

Related terms

• vapouren

Descendants

• English: vapour, vapor
• Scots: vapour

References

• “v??p?ur, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007, retrieved 2018-09-01.

Etymology 2

From Old French vaporer.

Verb

vapour

1. Alternative form of vapouren