Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. One that is insubstantial or impractical: "They'd wanted him for Ambassador in Paris but he'd turned it down; he'd no patience with the airy-fairies” ( John le Carré).
- adj. Insubstantial or impractical: "You are talking about some airy fairy concept which will never come in my lifetime” ( Margaret Thatcher).
Examples
“We found a couple that were not too touristy and not of the airy-fairy, fluffy-bunny variety, which was refreshing.”
“I recommend you find a qualified legal advisor for definitive answers to your questions, if such people do, in fact, exist outside my fantasies. just recall Alaska being pretty airy-fairy when it came to the letter of the law, or anything else.”
“This is not to say that I believe in airy-fairy notions of spirit, but I'm willing to pretend, as an expedient fiction, that my id and your id and all the ids coded into artworks throughout our culture form an ... aesthetic-behavioural system of sorts.”
“He dropped the airy-fairy visionary verbiage and talked turkey.”
“Even the title had a Rayner story lurking behind it: "Now with wings" was the slogan used to promote a new sanitary towel with flaps in the 80s, one of only two TV commercials she ever agreed to do – because, as Sandi Toksvig explained, Claire was fed up with "airy-fairy adverts with women leaping around in trousers or diving into swimming pools".”
The Guardian: Claire Rayner memorial fundraiser draws star-studded cast
“Whenever he was feeling surly, which was often, Bo liked to ask his wife what the hell she thought she was doing, wasting her time with all this airy-fairy, futuristic crap.”
“Your reference to airy-fairy notions like citizen so-called “happiness” are laughably off topic.”
Matthew Yglesias » Economic Freedom, Universal Health Care, and Labor Unions
“There is a good idea there, but it's being presented in such an airy-fairy "Hey, wouldn't it be great to explore!" way that I simply can't buy it.”
“Any benefit that is not delivered to the voters in the next six months is irrelevent – because the Republicans will make big gains in November and render your airy-fairy social engineering moot.”
“This place is infested with airy-fairy English Lit failures and yet I – an engineer — have to do the Critical Analysis?”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘airy-fairy’.
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Reduples
Go for it, brothers and sisters! I personally have been suffering long for lack of an open reduplicatives list
happy clappy, bribble-brabble, diddle-daddle, hugger-mugger, kikiriki, Bora-Bora, mahi-mahi, jingle-jangle, knick-knack paddy..., chit-chat, bon-bon, clapperclaw and 292 more...
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Things from my memory
nigger baby, mexican jumping bean, puddle jumper, mood ring, pet rock, cat scratch fever, taxman, hippie, vaseline, argyrol, mercurchrome, methiolade and 655 more...
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Double Trouble
Reduplicatives and more.
splish-splash, hip-hop, kit-kat, dingaling, hugger-mugger, even-steven, tit for tat, higgledy-piggledy, dilly-dally, boogie-woogie, knick-knack, mai tai and 131 more...
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Super-fishy
Whut. Huh. Make it quick, I's gotsta go TV or whatever. Huh? That's too brainy.
Boobs.holophrasis, perfunctory, desultory, sciolist, smattering, epigone, velleity, dilettante, simulacrum, shallow, one-dimensional, noddy and 68 more...
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kissmesweet's list
lucid, droplet, silhouette, ethereal, impressions, fata morgana, woebegone, cryptadia, façade, airy-fairy, reticence, psilosophy and 20 more...
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replications
holus-bolus, push-puller, riffraff, ricky-ticky, fuzzy-wuzzy, hoity-toity, wishy-washy, airy-fairy, hugger-mugger, fuddy-duddy, knick-knack, roly-poly and 4 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for airy-fairy.
treeseed Merriam-Webster Dictionary:
adjective
Date: 1850
1.chiefly British : delicate fairylike
2.chiefly British : lacking substance or purpose
not practical or not useful in real situations Feb 3, 2008