Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a vaporous manner; with vapors.
  • Boastingly; ostentatiously.

Etymologies

Sorry, no etymologies found.

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Examples

  • One is dragged through this muck by characters are so variously and vaporously drawn, it becomes impossible for the reader to attach any concern to them whatsoever.

    MIND MELD: Books We Love That Everyone Else Hates (and Vice Versa) 2010

  • Matt Smith pops up early ... and comes off quite vaporously pretty.

    My God, It's Full Of Tweets! 2009

  • Where … Memory of the moment started leaking back in, vaporously thin and with apparent gaps.

    365 tomorrows » 2007 » June : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2007

  • The blue waving line of the downs, crowned here and there by clumps of trees, ran far along the southwestern horizon, melting vaporously in the distance above "the Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames."

    The Invader A Novel

  • As he came to her side she raised her head and breathed "Good night!" to that ghostly essence which she conceived was floating vaporously in the upper air and slipped her arm in his.

    The Judge Rebecca West 1937

  • The harbor was now as calm as a pond, except for the pink and dove color running vaporously on the back of a long swell from the south.

    The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story Various 1915

  • Learned oculists theorized vaporously about optic atrophies, fractures, and brain pressures of one sort and another; and meanwhile Robert Austin, in the highest perfection of bodily vigor, in the fullest possession of those faculties that had raised him from an unschooled farm-boy to a position of eminence in the business world, went slowly blind.

    Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories Rex Ellingwood Beach 1913

  • Toward midnight "Fingerless" Fraser, cruising in a nocturnal search for adventure and profit, found him in a semi-maudlin state, descanting vaporously to his train; and, upon catching mention of the Kalvik fisheries, snatched him homeward and put him to bed, after which he locked him into his room, threw the key over the transom, and stood guard outside until assured that he slept.

    The Silver Horde Rex Ellingwood Beach 1913

  • Its base is effaced by far mists: out of the air the thing would seem to have shaped itself -- a phantom cone, diaphanously grey below, vaporously white above, with a dream of perpetual snow -- the mighty mountain of Daisen.

    Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan First Series Lafcadio Hearn 1877

  • That was a very doubtful possibility; the hope built upon it was vaporously unsubstantial.

    A Red Wallflower Susan Warner 1852

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