(adv.) In an airy manner; lightly; gaily; jauntily; flippantly.
Example Sentences:
(1) When last week’s scandal broke, Tesco chair Sir Richard Broadbent airily opined: “Things are always unnoticed until they are noticed.” He forgot to mention that that goes double if people are paid to turn a blind eye.
(2) He airily concludes: "It may well be the case that ethics rules could have been introduced earlier at Fifa and that there were no sufficient control mechanisms in earlier years but this does not lead to any violation of ethical standards, which only existed as rules from October 2004."
(3) Peter Hill-Wood, who stepped down as Arsenal's chairman earlier this year and handed the job to Sir Chips Keswick, was criticised for airily dismissing the concerns of supporters as the "same lot" and Arsène Wenger's insistence that reaching the Champions League counted as a "trophy" invited derision.
(4) She also recognises that there was more to it than this in her case, that the rock'n'roll clichés she airily dismissed in our first interview have become part of our collective folk memory.
(5) "You have to be over 50," Waterhouse replied airily.
(6) His 15-minute speech included boasts about the supposed – and inaccurate – size of crowds for his inauguration; expressions of airily defined love and support for intelligence agencies with which he has been at odds over their belief in Russian attempts to influence the election on his behalf; boasts about the number of times he has appeared on the cover of Time magazine ; the supposed fact that it stopped raining when he spoke at the Capitol on Friday ( it didn’t ); and an insinuation that he might start another war in Iraq.
(7) Speaking to a handful of journalists at Sporting’s training field yesterday (including one pale, bearded specimen huddled into the corner of his office nearest the baseboard heater), Vermes recalled playing in a game in freezing rain at the Rutgers Bowl, before airily gesturing at the tundra beyond his window and saying, “this is nothing.” I expect him to wear one of those t-shirts with a shirt and tie printed on it for the final.
(8) As foreign secretary William Hague met with representatives from over 140 countries to work towards ending impunity for wartime sexual violence and increasing prosecutions, he was airily accused of " hobnobbing at rape summit" with Angelina Jolie.
(9) Elsewhere he airily claimed that the UK is likely to leave the EU customs union while wanting to trade freely with the single market afterwards.
(10) On the Radio 4 Today programme this morning, Michael Heseltine airily dismissed a question about the Conservatives breaking links with their sister parties in eastern Europe as something that no voter was interested in.
(11) "Well these could easily be real people," she offers airily, but the dialogue consistently lacks the ring of truth, and many of the exchanges seem to serve no other purpose than to make the author look good.
(12) Yet their unpopularity, Heseltine maintains airily, in no way discredits the policy.
(13) "We allowed the information to come up to ministers," she said airily, which translated as "not one".
(14) Second, Hefce has been airily designated as "lead regulator".
(15) The party seems to be Teflon-coated down here, immune to gaffe after gaffe, and local chairman Martyn Heale’s National Front past is airily dismissed as a phase, at what he maintains was “a bit of a social club”.
(16) "The reality is that I have been in contact with a lot of people inside Syria and I have been following things very closely," he airily told Radio Scotland .
(17) As he embarks on army training, his eager bravado is palpable and he opts to join the machine gun corps – "They call it the suicide club," he writes airily.
(18) I asked a senior press officer who said airily, "Oh it was just lighthearted, one of those end of recess stories."
(19) Grand sentiments airily expressed, and all completely lost on Oxford city council's planners, who wanted the beached creature removed and put next to a public swimming pool.
(20) "Occasionally, in Richmond Park," he replied airily.
Airy
Definition:
(a.) Consisting of air; as, an airy substance; the airy parts of bodies.
(a.) Relating or belonging to air; high in air; aerial; as, an airy flight.
(a.) Open to a free current of air; exposed to the air; breezy; as, an airy situation.
(a.) Resembling air; thin; unsubstantial; not material; airlike.
(a.) Relating to the spirit or soul; delicate; graceful; as, airy music.
(a.) Without reality; having no solid foundation; empty; trifling; visionary.
(a.) Light of heart; vivacious; sprightly; flippant; superficial.
(a.) Having an affected manner; being in the habit of putting on airs; affectedly grand.
(a.) Having the light and aerial tints true to nature.
Example Sentences:
(1) When Philip Roth accepted the biennial International Booker prize honouring some 60 years of his fiction, from Goodbye, Columbus to Nemesis , he sat at a wooden table in the studio adjoining his airy Connecticut retreat looking as much like a retired priest, or judge, as the Grand Old Man of American letters, pushing 79.
(2) All of which makes it curious to find the film's stars abruptly reunited in the airy limbo of a Paris hotel, just south of the Arc de Triomphe.
(3) It seemed to me watching the film that the concept of the cloud was another great piece of airy obfuscation on the part of the internet corporations, who like to peddle the childlike and the playful in the way that banks used to flog you credit cards called Smile and Egg and Marbles and Goldfish, to encourage you not to think too hard about the small print (what could possibly go wrong?).
(4) The airy, whitewashed restaurant is tasteful, but still a local joint.
(5) They ranged from the “hmm” to the blatant to the eye-wateringly awful: ‘Hair twirling’ I recall once the suggestion that I ask a question of another team, in a very airy and innocent manner, hair-twirling and all, to try and get a more favourable answer than previously.
(6) Snare describes the portrait quite clearly: the young Charles with his large liquid eyes and pale face, appearing in three-quarter view without rigidity or outline, the painting as airy as mist (and the prince too young for Van Dyck, who only portrayed Charles in his 30s).
(7) On the inside it is cream coloured, airy and slightly chewy.
(8) Perhaps her airy way of describing this vast archive, withheld in breach of the spirit of the Public Record Act of 1958, had something to do with embarrassment.
(9) People around, young people in general can see what engineering is and the fact that it is no longer a mucky, oily, grimy place to work but it is a light, airy, clean environment," he said.
(10) However, Miliband's airy rhetoric leaves gaping holes for the Tories to fill with their own version of what a Labour government is about: bankrupting the country, ramping up debt, subsidising dissolute scroungers, opening the borders to mass immigration.
(11) Today is busy enough, with herds of small people from a vast range of ethnic backgrounds – the area is one of the most diverse in the country – crowding around the fold-out tables in a bright, airy hall just off the reception area.
(12) In an airy white blouse, art gallery owner Dasha Zhukova poses serenely on a chair, in a photograph taken for a Russian fashion website.
(13) The second, of course, is the voyeuristic pleasure the camera takes in the delicacies: the shot of a spoon plunging through the soft, airy volume of a chocolate souffle, for example.
(14) Punk often sneered at "art" as airy-fairy, bourgeois self-indulgence, but its ranks were full of art-school graduates and this artiness blossomed with the sound, design and stage presentation of bands such as Wire and Talking Heads.
(15) No more so than in the airy officers of the consultancy firm Marketing Greece.
(16) In his airy new office, Cable says his views have evolved, but refuses to sit in the quirky modern chair shipped in by his predecessor, Lord Mandelson.
(17) But she struck me as being very airy-fairy, not the kind of crisp and to-the-point person I was after.
(18) And it is this that has brought us here today, to Science, the airy central London headquarters of Hirst's art and business empire.
(19) He pauses, looking at the assembled Kurds, Iraqis, Libyans, Bosnians, Serbs, Mexicans, Americans and others in front of him, gathered in the airy auditorium of the Peace Palace in The Hague.
(20) Thoughtful speeches on rehabilitating recidivists who wreck communities were reduced to jokes about hugging hoodies, while attempts to debate rising levels of depression, inadequate care and family breakdown were mocked as an Old Etonian's airy-fairy talk of happiness.