Also 9 vaporer. [f. VAPOUR v.]
1. One who vapours; a bragging, grandiloquent, or fantastical talker.
1653. Gauden, Hierasp., 223. This pusillanimous and frothy generation of vapourers … are the greatest enemies to … our Religion.
1665. Pepys, Diary, 3 Dec. A fortunate, though a passionate and but weak, man as to policy,… and one that is the greatest vapourer in the world.
1771. Fletcher, Checks, Wks. 1795, III. 238. That vapourer in favour of your perseverance, fairly and consistently builds on … the foundation of the Calvinists.
1816. J. Gilchrist, Philos. Etym., 214. We might show how applicable to certain rhetorical metaphysical vaporers the descriptions are.
1843. Tait’s Mag., X. 344. Not one of your old serene metaphysical vapourers.
2. Vapourer moth, a British moth of the genus Orgyia, esp. O. antiqua, the male of which flies with a rapid quivering motion.
1782. W. Curtis, Brown-tail Moth, 6. The Phalæna Antiqua, or Vapourer Moth, which I have seen to thrive on the deadly Nightshade and poisonous Laurel.
1832. T. Brown, Bk. Butterflies & M. (1834), I. 49. The following figure of the female Vapourer Moth.
1871. Kingsley, At Last, viii. A crawling grub, like the female of our own Vapourer moth.
1890. Eleanor A. Ormerod, Injur. Insects (ed. 2), 322. The pretty and easily distinguishable caterpillar of the Common Vapourer Moth.
ellipt. 1819. Samouelle, Entomol. Compend., 418. Bombyx gonostigmata. The scarce Vapourer.
1861. Morris, Brit. Moths, I. 77. Orgyia antiqua, Vapourer.
