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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
vapour
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
vapour trail
water vapour
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
barrier
▪ We had to staple a polythene vapour barrier to the rafters of a pitched roof.
▪ These were sealed in the same way as the rooflights, with air / vapour barrier material and plenty of butyl tape.
▪ The vapour barrier also served to protect the timber from rainfall during the time that the roof was being constructed.
▪ Cut to size, push between rafters, and conceal behind plasterboard lined with vapour barrier.
▪ A vapour barrier is formed by packaging the salt in foil lined boxes.
▪ Profiled insulation panels are laid on top of vapour barrier and then covered with Rockwell sheet.
pressure
▪ It was inflated with liquid rubber monomer under its own vapour pressure.
▪ The partial vapour pressure of the less volatile component decreases at the same time.
▪ The more volatile component is thus the one with the higher vapour pressure.
▪ Figure 3.13 shows how the vapour pressure of water increases with temperature.
▪ The increase in vapour pressure with temperature can be explained in terms of the kinetic theory.
▪ At all vapour pressures and compositions below it, the mixture is a vapour.
▪ Any decline in water loss might also be partly offset by the resulting increase in atmospheric water vapour pressure deficit.
▪ The inert gas argon is added to help to start the discharge because the vapour pressure of the mercury is very low.
trail
▪ Ruth flopped back in the lounger and studied the vapour trail through half-closed eyes.
▪ It was leaving an impressive vapour trail.
▪ High overhead, a jet laid its vapour trail across a bleached-blue sky.
water
▪ The amount of water vapour in a battery depends on the concentration of sulphuric acid in the solution.
▪ A porous polymer membrane bag seals the electrolyte, allowing water vapour, but not the acid solution, to pass.
▪ Both ordinary and thermal plasterboard are also available with a backing film which makes it resistant to water vapour.
▪ Or will more water vapour feed the warming process?
Water vapour is a naturally occurring greenhouse gas but the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is affected by human activities.
▪ Any decline in water loss might also be partly offset by the resulting increase in atmospheric water vapour pressure deficit.
▪ It must also provide a high level of water vapour resistance.
▪ Comets are easy to find because they are bright, being surrounded by vast clouds of water vapour.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ At a distance, the figures of Lucier and Izzie stood like souls in purgatory, chest-deep in the seething vapour.
▪ It was inflated with liquid rubber monomer under its own vapour pressure.
▪ Or will more water vapour feed the warming process?
▪ The vapour might condense and fall on the slopes as a new sort of lubricant snow.
▪ The vapour of his breath feathered in a trail behind him as he moved through the cold bushes towards the stream.
▪ The swept vapour screen may be best employed for 3-D computer displays and component visualisation.
▪ Thus, at various stages in the column the descending liquid and the ascending vapour are in equilibrium.
▪ We had to staple a polythene vapour barrier to the rafters of a pitched roof.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
vapour

Vapor \Va"por\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Vapored; p. pr. & vb. n. Vaporing.] [From Vapor, n.: cf. L. vaporare.] [Written also vapour.]

  1. To pass off in fumes, or as a moist, floating substance, whether visible or invisible, to steam; to be exhaled; to evaporate.

  2. To emit vapor or fumes. [R.]

    Running waters vapor not so much as standing waters.
    --Bacon.

  3. To talk idly; to boast or vaunt; to brag.

    Poets used to vapor much after this manner.
    --Milton.

    We vapor and say, By this time Matthews has beaten them.
    --Walpole.

vapour

Vapor \Va"por\, v. t. To send off in vapor, or as if in vapor; as, to vapor away a heated fluid. [Written also vapour.]

He'd laugh to see one throw his heart away, Another, sighing, vapor forth his soul.
--B. Jonson.

vapour

Vapor \Va"por\, n. [OE. vapour, OF. vapour, vapor, vapeur, F. vapeur, L. vapor; probably for cvapor, and akin to Gr. ? smoke, ? to breathe forth, Lith. kvepti to breathe, smell, Russ. kopote fine soot. Cf. Vapid.] [Written also vapour.]

  1. (Physics) Any substance in the gaseous, or a["e]riform, state, the condition of which is ordinarily that of a liquid or solid.

    Note: The term vapor is sometimes used in a more extended sense, as identical with gas; and the difference between the two is not so much one of kind as of degree, the latter being applied to all permanently elastic fluids except atmospheric air, the former to those elastic fluids which lose that condition at ordinary temperatures. The atmosphere contains more or less vapor of water, a portion of which, on a reduction of temperature, becomes condensed into liquid water in the form of rain or dew. The vapor of water produced by boiling, especially in its economic relations, is called steam.

    Vapor is any substance in the gaseous condition at the maximum of density consistent with that condition. This is the strict and proper meaning of the word vapor.
    --Nichol.

  2. In a loose and popular sense, any visible diffused substance floating in the atmosphere and impairing its transparency, as smoke, fog, etc.

    The vapour which that fro the earth glood [glided].
    --Chaucer.

    Fire and hail; snow and vapors; stormy wind fulfilling his word.
    --Ps. cxlviii. 8.

  3. Wind; flatulence. [Obs.]
    --Bacon.

  4. Something unsubstantial, fleeting, or transitory; unreal fancy; vain imagination; idle talk; boasting.

    For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
    --James iv. 14.

  5. pl. An old name for hypochondria, or melancholy; the blues. ``A fit of vapors.''
    --Pope.

  6. (Pharm.) A medicinal agent designed for administration in the form of inhaled vapor. --Brit. Pharm. Vapor bath.

    1. A bath in vapor; the application of vapor to the body, or part of it, in a close place; also, the place itself.

    2. (Chem.) A small metallic drying oven, usually of copper, for drying and heating filter papers, precipitates, etc.; -- called also air bath. A modified form is provided with a jacket in the outside partition for holding water, or other volatile liquid, by which the temperature may be limited exactly to the required degree.

      Vapor burner, a burner for burning a vaporized hydrocarbon.

      Vapor density (Chem.), the relative weight of gases and vapors as compared with some specific standard, usually hydrogen, but sometimes air. The vapor density of gases and vaporizable substances as compared with hydrogen, when multiplied by two, or when compared with air and multiplied by 28.8, gives the molecular weight.

      Vapor engine, an engine worked by the expansive force of a vapor, esp. a vapor other than steam.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
vapour

chiefly British English spelling of vapor; see -or.

Wiktionary
vapour

n. cloud diffused matter such as mist, steam or fumes suspended in the air. vb. 1 (context intransitive English) To become vapour; to be emitted or circulated as vapour. 2 (context transitive English) To turn into vapour. 3 (context intransitive English) To use insubstantial language; to boast or bluster. 4 To emit vapour or fumes.

WordNet
vapour
  1. n. a visible suspension in the air of particles of some substance [syn: vapor]

  2. the process of becoming a vapor [syn: vaporization, vaporisation, vapor, evaporation]

Wikipedia

Usage examples of "vapour".

Manner of performing the experiments--Action of distilled water in comparison with the solutions--Carbonate of ammonia, absorbed by the roots--The vapour absorbed by the glands--Drops on the disc--Minute drops applied to separate glands--Leaves immersed in weak solutions--Minuteness of the doses which induce aggregation of the protoplasm--Nitrate of ammonia, analogous experiments with--Phosphate of ammonia, analogous experiments with--Other salts of ammonia--Summary and concluding remarks on the action of salts of ammonia.

Which fills this vapour, as the aereal hue Of fountain-gazing roses fills the water, Flows from thy mighty sister.

Next, glorious bars of light sprang up across the eastern sky, and through them the radiant messengers of the dawn came speeding upon their arrowy way, scattering the ghostly vapours and awaking the mountains with a kiss, as they flew from range to range and longitude to longitude.

The little vessel continued to beat its way seaward, and the ironclads receded slowly towards the coast, which was hidden still by a marbled bank of vapour, part steam, part black gas, eddying and combining in the strangest way.

The minutest trace of digitalin moistened with sulphuric and treated with bromine vapour gives a rose colour, turning to mauve.

Hitherto the mountain had always been hidden in mist, but now its radiant beauty was unveiled for many thousand feet, although the base was still wrapped in vapour so that the lofty peak or pillar, towering nearly twenty thousand feet into the sky, appeared to be a fairy vision, hanging between earth and heaven, and based upon the clouds.

I could see that great jungles of unknown tree-ferns, calamites, lepidodendra, and sigillaria lay outside the city, their fantastic frondage waving mockingly in the shifting vapours.

Sheep moved, grazing on the slopes of Creag Dubh, and behind me white trails of vapour rose and fell in strange convoluted billows above the cliff-edge where fulmars wheeled in constant flight, soaring, still-winged on the up-draughts.

Only from the tennis-court building, in its secluded corner of the famous demesne, did gleams of gaslight faintly mitigate the dank, muffling vapour.

He turned from the inscriptions to face the room with its bizarre contents, and saw that the kylix on the floor, in which the ominous efflorescent powder had lain, was giving forth a cloud of thick, greenish-black vapour of surprising volume and opacity.

There was nothing to relate beyond the looming up of that form when the greenish-black vapour from the kylix parted, and Willett was too tired to ask himself what had really occurred.

Many a wiser man than I had been mystified by dyspepsia and melancholic vapours.

The Treacy sisters stood on top of the Cliffs of Moher, taking in the enormity of the vista before them: a haze of misty-whites, abstract purples and blue vapours that had once been sea and land.

Garonne below the trembling radiance was faintly obscured by the lightest vapour.

And then would his nostrils begin to lift and sniff at the creeping up of a thick pestiferous vapour.