Literary notes about Vapid (AI summary)
In literary texts, “vapid” is frequently employed to denote a lack of vitality, substance, or character. Writers use it to describe both physical appearances and abstract qualities: a face with no spark or meaning [1] and eyes or expressions void of life [2], as well as ideas or prose that are shallow, insipid, or trite [3], [4]. At times, it also appears in discussions of taste and sensory experience, characterizing food or beverages as flat and lacking flavor [5], [6]. Even in critiques of dialogue, literature, or performance, “vapid” signals an absence of depth or originality, making it a versatile adjective in examining art and human behavior [7], [8].
- She was pretty, but her face was vapid, and seemed to have no character at all.
— from Complete Project Gutenberg John Galsworthy Works by John Galsworthy - He stood tall but hunched over; gaunt, with pasty skin, vapid eyes, and a kind of yellow-nondescript hair.
— from Question of Comfort by Les Cole - Likewise, by those who liked them, there were impressions to be bought of all the vapid prints, going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid books.
— from The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices by Charles Dickens - It was the usual thing, vapid, meaningless, inane.
— from The Angel by Guy Thorne - Being again heated, its taste and flavor will be still further impaired, and heated a third time, it will be found vapid and nauseous.
— from All About Coffee by William H. Ukers - Apart from these five things—sweet, bitter, sour, salt, vapid,—we ‘taste’ entirely by smell or touch.
— from A Beginner's Psychology by Edward Bradford Titchener - Your eyes are as vapid as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox.
— from Ulysses by James Joyce - It would be an experience irrelevant to conduct, no part, therefore, of a Life of Reason, but a kind of lovely vapid music or parasitic dream.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana
