Writers employ the word vapor to evoke a sense of the ephemeral and the mysterious, often using it to blur boundaries between the seen and unseen. In adventurous narratives, vapor shrouds tunnels, mountains, and distant horizons with ambiguity and hidden depth, as in the evocative imagery of subterranean journeys and vast landscapes [1, 2, 3]. In other instances, it becomes a symbol of fleeting life and decay, hinting at a transient quality of existence that mirrors the ever-changing human condition [4, 5, 6]. Even in more technical or scientific contexts, vapor signifies transformation and the break between states, fusing the natural with the analytical in a single, versatile image [7, 8, 9].
- The tunnel began to be filled by clouds of vapor, while a small stream ran away into the interior of the earth.
— from A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne
- Immense whirlwinds of vapor obscured the sky, through which glimmered a few stars.
— from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
- The summit of the volcano, with its plume of vapor, could be seen by occasional flashes.
— from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
- At the same time my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2 by Edgar Allan Poe
- ✠ Man's life's a vapor, and full of woes, He cuts a caper, and down he goes.
— from Funny Epitaphs
- -The gray vapor had now arisen many more degrees above the horizon, and was gradually losing its grayness of tint.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe
- Determination of specific heats, heats of fusion, heats at which bodies pass into vapor.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
- Lecture 15.—Physical ideas relative to the use of the vapor of water as a motive power.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson
- Tension of a saturated vapor at the boiling point of its liquid.
— from The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America by Thomas Jefferson