Wiktionary
n. (plural of vapour English)
WordNet
n. a state of depression; "he had a bad case of the blues" [syn: blues, blue devils, megrims, vapors]
Wikipedia
In archaic usage, the vapours (or vapors) is a reference to the treatment of certain mental or physical states, such as hysteria, mania, clinical depression, bipolar disorder, lightheadedness, fainting, flush, withdrawal syndrome, mood swings, or PMS, where a sufferer lost mental focus. Ascribed primarily to women and thought to be caused by internal emanations, it was related to the concept of female hysteria. Vapours were used as a treatment for conditions considered to be the female equivalent to melancholy found in men .
The word "vapours", referencing the treatment, was subsequently used to describe a depressed or hysterical nervous condition. Today, the phrase "a case of the vapors" is most often used either melodramatically or for comedic effect.
Vapours is the third studio album by Montreal-based indie rock band, Islands. It was released on September 22, 2009. Talking to Pitchfork, singer Nick Diamonds stated how he stripped away many of the layers present on the previous Islands album, 2008's Arm's Way. "I needed to withdraw from overblown metaphors and filling every possible sonic space," said Diamonds. "So this record is just made up of sequenced programming, synths, drum machines, guitars, and real bass. And an electric sitar." In this album, Nick "Diamonds" began going by his real name, "Nick Thorburn" and original drummer Jamie Thompson returned to the band.
Usage examples of "vapours".
But some of these vapours also act as stimulants, exciting rapid, almost spasmodic movements in the tentacles.
Amid the highest of such hopes as the woman roused in me, I scented the vapours of the pit.
Finding himself on his back, and trying to turn on his side in order to rise, his elbow found no support, and lifting his head a little, he looked down into a moon-pervaded abyss, where thin silvery vapours were stealing about.
The vapours of chloroform, sulphuric and nitric ether, act in a singularly variable manner on different leaves, and on the several tentacles of the same leaf.
It is generally believed that with animals and plants these vapours act by arresting oxidation.
The vapours of camphor, alcohol, chloroform, sulphuric and nitric ether, are poisonous in moderately large doses, but in small doses serve as narcotics or, anaesthetics, greatly delaying the subsequent action of meat.
Then came the pale face, so worshipping, so distant in its self-withdrawn devotion, slowly dawning out of the vapours of her reverie.
What if men and women did not die all out, but some dim shade of each, like that pale, mind-ghost of Wolkenlicht, floated through the eternal vapours of chaos?
I thought and thought till I began to feel the air alive about me, and was enveloped in the vapours that dim the eyes of those who strain them for one peep through the dull mica windows that will not open on the world of ghosts.
Aklis was revealed in burning beams as of a sun, and the trouble of the air ceased, vapours slowly curling to the four quarters.
Then there came a hoar-frost, and the earth, which had been black, became white, as its evaporated vapours began to gather and drops of rain to fall.
The weather, as is its uncomfortable habit in England, had suddenly grown tropically hot, plunging London into the vapours of an African spring, and the sun was streaming through my open window fully upon the table.
The evening vapours rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches.