a. [f. STEAM sb. + -Y.]
1. Consisting of, abounding in, or emitting steam; resembling steam.
1644. Digby, Nat. Bodies, xxvii. § 7. 247. Were they not continually stuffed and clogged with grosse vapours of steamy meates.
1785. Cowper, Task, IV. 39. While the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Throws up a steamy column.
1818. Milman, Samor, 97. So they bravely strove For the bleak freedom of their steamy moors.
1866. Livingstone, Last Jrnls. (1874), I. 21. The steamy, smothering air.
1899. Edin. Rev., Oct., 288. The climate is steamy and enervating.
fig. 1841. Carlyle, Ess., Baillie (1857), IV. 232. Baillie is the true newspaper; he is to be used and studied like one. Taken up in this way, his steamy indistinctness abates.
2. Covered with condensed vapor. (Cf. STEAM v. 5 and 9 d.) Path. Of the cornea: Covered or apparently covered with condensed vapor.
1869. G. Lawson, Dis. Eye (1874), 30. The cornea grows dull and steamy.
1879. St. George’s Hosp. Rep., IX. 488. Both corneæ continued steamy.
Hence Steamily adv.; Steaminess.
1857. Livingstone, Trav. S. Africa, xxviii. 578. I myself felt an oppressive steaminess in the atmosphere.
1880. Miss Bird, Japan, I. 128. The temperature is from 72° to 86°, and in the steaminess, needles rust.
1909. H. G. Wells, in English Rev., March, 734. I became steamily hot.
