You lose a pair of glasses. You start off by saying:
- "My glasses could be anywhere." = I don't know where my glasses are. They could be here, there, up, down. In that room, or in another room. I don't know. The glasses are in one of those many different places.
after a few minutes of searching you might say:
"I've looked everywhere for my glasses." = I've looked here, there, up, down, in one room, in another but with no luck. Conclusion: I still don't have my glasses.
"I know my glasses must be somewhere" = They are not here, there, up, nor down, in one room or in another. But they can't have disappeared. I had those glasses just a minute ago. Where are they?
I ask my wife where my glasses are. She always knows where things are.
- "Do you know where my glasses are? I can't find them anywhere." = I've looked everywhere but I didn't find them in any of the places I looked.
My wife replies patiently
- "Yes I do, as a matter of fact, they're on your head."
Historically, mist was categorized as a meteorological or atmospheric condition. Hence, Webster's Dictionary of Synonyms (1942) lists mist in a category with haze, fog, smog, and brume:
Haze, mist, fog, smog, and brume agree in denoting an atmospheric condition which deprives the air near the earth of its transparency. ... Mist applies to a condition where water is held in suspension in fine particles in the air, floating or slowly falling in minute drops.
Figuratively, as Merriam-Webster's Eleventh Collegiate Dictionary (2003) observes, mist can also refer to various things suggestive of atmospheric mist:
4 a : a cloud of small particles or objects suggestive of a mist b : a suspension of a finely divided liquid in a gas c : a fine spray
In contrast, though vapor can be used to describe mistlike conditions, it has a stronger connection to gaseous rather than particulate solid or liquid states. It comes from the Latin word vapor meaning steam. Again from the Eleventh Collegiate, here are the first three definitions:
vapor n (14c) 1 : diffused matter (as smoke or fog) suspended floating in the air and impairing its transparency 2 a : a substance in the gaseous state as distinguished from the liquid or solid state b : a substance (as gasoline, alcohol, mercury, or benzoin) vaporized for industrial, therapeutic, or military uses; also : a mixture (as the explosive mixture in an internal combustion engine) of such vapor with air
Given the association of vapor with heating or sublimating into lighter than air gases (and leaving aside the stubborn fact that vapor has long been used as a way to describe fogs and—inevitably—mists), one might argue that a vapor in many instances rises, while a mist tends to descend slowly.
Incidentally, Noah Webster, in his Compendious Dictionary of the English Language (1806) gives only the heated or sublimated sense of vapor:
Vapor n. a fluid rendered volatile and elastic by heating, fume
Samuel Johnson, Dictionary of the English Language (1756) has a more varied (and interesting) take on the word:
VAPOUR. s. [vapor, Lat.] 1. Any thing exhalable ; any thing that mingles with the air. Milton. 2. Wind, flatulence. Bacon. 3. Fume ; steam. Newton. 4. Mental fume ; vain imagination. Hammond. 5. Diseases caused by flatulence, or by diseased nerves ; melancholy ; spleen. Addison.
Best Answer
In bed refers to customary activities undertaken while someone is (usually) on the way to sleep.
In the bed is normally less likely to denote customary activity associated with sleeping and more likely to denote other activities:
This would describe something that might have taken place while gathering bed linen for the laundry. It also might have been someone else's bed, not your own.
This would probably mean they bothered you while you were trying to sleep.