What's the difference between airy and awry?

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.

Awry


Definition:

  • (adv. & a.) Turned or twisted toward one side; not in a straight or true direction, or position; out of the right course; distorted; obliquely; asquint; with oblique vision; as, to glance awry.
  • (adv. & a.) Aside from the line of truth, or right reason; unreasonable or unreasonably; perverse or perversely.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Hester also pledged that customers from other banks will be repaid for 'knock-on' costs after they were left out of pocket by an IT failure that sent 20m transactions awry.
  • (2) The Boaty McBoatface saga is not the first time online polls have gone awry.
  • (3) This is supposed to "empower" them and make it much easier for them to be held to account when budgets go awry, as they have a habit of doing in defence.
  • (4) In a more applied sense, such knowledge may also provide a rational approach to controlling metabolic disease syndromes related to adipogenesis gone awry such as obesity-associated diabetes and cachexia.
  • (5) Informing the patient about a procedure that went awry can help avoid unnecessary legal procedures.
  • (6) Unless the polls are seriously awry, that seems unlikely.
  • (7) Things looked promising when Blackpool began the season brightly and remained in the top four until November but then it started to go awry in December.
  • (8) 11.23am BST It looks like the Ukranian attempt to reassert control in Slavyansk has gone awry, with some troops going over to the pro-Russian side.
  • (9) Anthony Bosch – who choked back tears in court and said the clinic was a legitimate business gone awry – sought a more lenient term because of his cooperation in the investigation, but US District Judge Darrin Gayles refused.
  • (10) This found its personification in the disappointing Ross Barkley, whose burst from near his area before an awry pass was indicative of his contribution throughout.
  • (11) A subtle operational problem with most vapor stripping techniques is that the contents of the trap are consumed with one analysis; if anything goes awry, the analysis of that trapped sample cannot be repeated.
  • (12) If you study that history as I have, you’ll realize the stakes for Langley bosses are always highest when programs have gone awry or legacies hang in the balance.
  • (13) Sleep, a vital ingredient in life, is often taken for granted until something goes awry and sleep no longer comes easily.
  • (14) It was higher up the hierarchy where things went awry.
  • (15) In the cold war we were not contemplating how a cyber-attack might go awry.
  • (16) She had her first intimation that something was awry with the 20th century when she could no longer see the pistons driving the wheels on locomotives because, with the arrival of streamlining, they "had skirts on".
  • (17) Then things went awry, not only on the pitch, but on the Juve bench.
  • (18) Hull’s only creative outlet was Snodgrass and passes soon began to go awry for Mike Phelan’s side.
  • (19) When this carefully orchestrated and regulated cell control process goes awry because one or more of the proteins in the sequence has been altered by a mutated gene, the cell divides in an uncontrolled manner and malignancy results.
  • (20) 'In a musical sense, it seemed like all the good intentions had gone awry, very quickly.