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I was reading something and saw the following:

小さな和室で、古い造りなので風呂とトイレは別になっている。換気があまりよくないので、白羽さんの入った後の風呂場のドアから、湿気と湯気がむわりと部屋にたちこめていた。

I can't find むわり or むわりと in any dictionaries. I'm guessing むわりと might be 無割 and maybe it means undiluted, but how would that apply to steam/humidity?

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  • @l'électeur I looked around for むわむわと and didn't find any onomatopoeia. I thought maybe there was a very odd adverbial usage of 無割 or something because I could with a very big stretch see how purity could be relevant.
    – Ringil
    Apr 25, 2019 at 14:41

1 Answer 1

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When you encounter a word that is written in kana and is in the form of 「〇〇り(と)」, the chances are that it is an onomatopoeia or a variant of one.

「むわり(と)」 is an example of that. The more common forms are 「もわもわ」 and 「もわっと」, both of which should be found in any monolingual dictionary as they are both used quite often.

Weblio defines 「もわっと」 as:

"thick with smoke、moisture or odor; hard to breathe (air)"

「もわもわ」 means the same.

Finally, the 「むわり(と)」 variant, of course, means the same and therefore, it should fit the context.

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