vaporing

Updated: May 24, 2025

Violent speeches were made on these proposals at the very time when the House was refusing to support either an army or a navy. Sedgwick introduced some good sense into a debate that was alternating between blatant vaporing and legal pedantry, by pointing out that, under the Constitution, the President of the United States ought to be allowed to have some say about the matter.

Henry Jones Ford - Washington and his colleagues; a chronicle of the rise and fall of federalism

The reporters' gallery, was merely occupied by one or two watchful sentinels of the quill-driving guild; the main body cared nothing for a debate that had dwindled to a mere vaporing of dull speakers and now and then a brief quarrel over a point of order; but there was an unusually large attendance of journalists in the reporters' waiting-room, chatting, smoking, and keeping on the 'qui vive' for the general irruption of the Congressional volcano that must come when the time was ripe for it.

Mark Twain - The Gilded Age, Part 5.

But, as I have before shown, he was not a man to vent his spleen in idle vaporing. His first measure, after the paroxysm of wrath had subsided, was to stump upstairs to a huge wooden chest which served as his armory, from whence he drew forth that identical suit of regimentals described in the preceding chapter.

Washington Irving - Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete