[f. VAPOUR v.]
1. Emission of vapor; evaporation. rare.
1548. Elyot, Respiratio, a breathynge, or vapourynge.
1651. French, Distill., iii. 64. That Liquor … may be rectified by the vapouring away of the flegme.
2. The action of talking or acting in a high-flown or pretentious manner.
c. 1630. Sanderson, Serm. (1581), II. 306. The tongue may boast great things, and talk high…. We call it vapouring: and well may we so call it.
1656. Earl Monm., trans. Boccalini’s Pol. Touchstone (1674), 269. Spanish Officers,… with their vapouring, distaste the good servants of so great a Queen.
1706. Vanbrugh, Mistake, IV. 293. Take thy satin pincushion … thou madest such a vapouring about yesterday.
1773. Johnson, Lett., 25 March (1788), I. 80. Harry will be happier now he goes to school and reads Milton. Miss will want him for all her vapouring.
1816. Earl Dudley, Lett., 22 June (1840), 146. It is really amazing, that after all their vapouring … they should not have ventured to assail him.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes, v. (1904), 176. Consider them, with their tumid sentimental vapouring about virtue.
1879. McCarthy, Own Times, II. 197. The errors of which Lord Derby had been guilty and the preposterous vapourings of some of his less responsible followers.
3. fig. in pl. Vain imaginations.
1873. Dixon, Two Queens, I. vi. I. 44. These stings of conscience … were not the vapourings of an idle fancy.
