VAPOR — a breath, a puff of mist, the cloud you can see on a cold morning and cannot hold. It is a CONCRETE word, and it is the key word of Ecclesiastes: 38 of its 73 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible fall in that book, five of them in its second verse. ⚠ Jerome rendered it Latin vanitas and the KJV followed with 'vanity,' which in modern English has drifted toward conceit; the modern versions abstract it the other way ('meaningless,' 'futile'). Both convert an image into a verdict about worth. Vapor is not worthless — it is real, and it will not stay. It is also a man's name: HEVEL is ABEL (Genesis 4:2), a man called Breath who is alive for six verses. → first discussed at Ecclesiastes 1:2