vapid

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin vapidus (“flat, insipid, savourless”).^{[2][3][4][5][6]} Barnhart allows an obsolete French word as a second source,^[4] French vapide, which the OED compares, citing Cotgrave.^[2] The Latin adjective is related to vappa (“stale or flat wine”),^{[3][4][7][8][9]} and probably to vapor (“steam, exhalation”),^[3][4][8] which would make its literal sense "that has breathed out its vapour".^[3][4] Others are more careful: Hoad and Collins write "perhaps",^[7][9] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged notes the change of sense and the unexplained double p of the wine word.^[10]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of drinks, flat and insipid: 1656, in Blount's Glossographia.^[2][4] Etymonline dates it to the 1650s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

The word began as a description of liquor that had lost its briskness,^[2] and it soon spread to taste and flavour in general (1682) and, in medicine, to blood without vigour (1684).^[2] For a few decades it also meant damp or steamy (1660–90), apparently from association with vapor.^[2][11] Johnson's own dictionary (1755) defined it as dead, with the spirit evaporated, spiritless, flat.^[12] Three years later he was the first the OED finds applying it to talk and writing, in the Idler (1758),^[2][4][3] and this figure of flatness, dull and lifeless, spread to people and places (1785, in Cowper) and to amusements (1790, in Burke).^[2]

Timeline

• 1656 – of drinks, flat, insipid.^[2][4]
• 1660 – damp, steamy, vaporous (obsolete by 1690).^[2]
• 1682 – of taste or flavour, insipid.^[2]
• 1684 – in medicine, of blood, weak, inert.^[2]
• c. 1750 – of flowers, scentless (rare).^[2]
• 1758 – of talk or writing, dull, spiritless.^[2][4][3]
• 1785 – of persons or places, lifeless.^[2]
• 1790 – of amusements and pleasures, dull.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Of a drink or its taste, flat, without flavour or sharpness: a glass of vapid cider.^[9][10][2]
2. Dull and lacking liveliness or interest; insipid: vapid conversation at a long dinner.^[9][10][2]
3. (obsolete, 1660–90) Damp or steamy; vaporous.^[2][11]

Word family

• vapidity
• vapidly
• vapidness

Related words

• vapor

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
6. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.