What's the difference between airiness and insubstantiality?

Airiness


Definition:

  • (n.) The state or quality of being airy; openness or exposure to the air; as, the airiness of a country seat.
  • (n.) Lightness of spirits; gayety; levity; as, the airiness of young persons.

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.

Insubstantiality


Definition:

  • (n.) Unsubstantiality; unreality.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Variation in risk in association with sugar and starch intake was also insubstantial, while for fiber, there was a nonuniform reduction in risk at the three uppermost fifths of intake.
  • (2) Alistair Darling's announcement of a pay freeze for top public servants was today described as cynical and insubstantial by the Conservative leader, David Cameron .
  • (3) He also held a permit to work as a security guard, which he did at a courthouse in Port St Lucie, Florida, even though he was interviewed three times by the FBI in 2013 and 2014 following separate reports of extremist behavior and connections to terrorism that were in the end deemed insubstantial.
  • (4) Carbamazepine caused statistically significant, but clinically insubstantial, reductions in serum sodium and calcium, but not in the other electrolytes measured.
  • (5) Carbamazepine was found to cause statistically significant, but clinically insubstantial, decreases in white blood cell indexes.
  • (6) "I think it is slightly cynical in its timing; it is rather insubstantial in its content and it is not part of an overall approach," Cameron said on GMTV.
  • (7) The teachers in this study underestimated the extent to which their students could comprehend independently, often based on insubstantial evidence.
  • (8) This is rare, but has been observed in very similar form in association with this disorder in a not insubstantial proportion of cases.
  • (9) Last week Sheridan's wife Gail, also 46, was cleared of also committing perjury at the 2006 libel trial after the prosecution decided the case against her was too weak and insubstantial.
  • (10) Many doctors believe that the discomfort felt during such procedures is insubstantial.
  • (11) He argues that the hope that AGI is possible rests on a similarly insubstantial metaphor, namely that the mind is "essentially" a computer program.
  • (12) Since less than 1% of the intracellular 23Na has been estimated to be immobilized, fractional immobilization of intracellular 39K is also likely to be insubstantial.
  • (13) The show is about her “trying to be an adult”, she says (she’s 28), and it flits insubstantially from a duff audience participation game called “Which Disney princess are you?”, via a riff about still getting presents from Santa, to a joke about her anxiety that her friends are all getting married.
  • (14) Some user charges may be justified, especially if these revenues result insubstantial improvements in the quality and availability of services.
  • (15) Paget's disease has been ascribed several times to specimens of archeological bone but, in the absence of microscopic examination, the evidence remains insubstantial.
  • (16) Thus, the claim of a causal relationship between oral contraceptive steroids and thromboembolism does not appear to be firmly founded, and the belief that predisposing factors increase the risk to contraceptive users is equally insubstantial.
  • (17) The plastic body felt "insubstantial" and the mono speaker on the back "only fair".
  • (18) The error in pulse oximetry caused by the presence of carboxyhemoglobin is insubstantial, but methemoglobin gives either an understimation or an overestimation at high or low oxygen saturation, respectively, the turning point being near 70% saturation.
  • (19) I love trees, but the case for forest offsets still strikes me as insubstantial and, ultimately, as ungraspable as air.
  • (20) Variation in risk of BPED across levels defined in terms of daily total alcohol intake, and in terms of daily alcohol intake from individual beverages, was mostly insubstantial and not dose-dependent.

Words possibly related to "airiness"

Words possibly related to "insubstantiality"