What's the difference between airy and flippant?

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.

Flippant


Definition:

  • (a.) Of smooth, fluent, and rapid speech; speaking with ease and rapidity; having a voluble tongue; talkative.
  • (a.) Speaking fluently and confidently, without knowledge or consideration; empty; trifling; inconsiderate; pert; petulant.
  • (n.) A flippant person.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Ohler’s book may well irritate some historians; he makes flippant remarks and uses chapter titles such as “Sieg High!” and “High Hitler”.
  • (2) From flippant offensive comments about women to serious allegations of assault from those he has encountered through his relationships and career, Trump stands accused of misogyny to a degree that has not been seen in mainstream American politics for decades.
  • (3) This week, after an article in the Mail on Sunday detailed the prejudices he had expressed, Fury made what he calls flippant threats in a video interview against the journalist, Oliver Holt.
  • (4) The Zappa statue was audaciously suggested by local artists in 1992, as a slightly flippant test of their country's newfound democratic freedoms; to their surprise, the authorities called their bluff.
  • (5) Lewis, often all too ready with a flippant remark, suggested that Countrywide's highly unpopular chief executive, Angelo Mozilo, could go away and "have some fun" with the proceeds.
  • (6) However, when the remark was repeated in another newspaper, he contact the author to say that he has no reason to think Cook was murdered and put the remark down to a "flippant comment".
  • (7) As the Queens Park Rangers manager's first taste of the play-offs was a forgettable, fractious affair, the Champions League and the Championship felt worlds apart, even if Redknapp, ever ready with a flippant one-liner, pretended to disagree.
  • (8) I was 13, watching the news with my parents, and flippantly said to my dad: "When they catch that monster they should string him up."
  • (9) Flippantly, I ask, isn't the pay so low it amounts to charitable work?
  • (10) It is, for instance, a lot of work; I don't mean that flippantly.
  • (11) This professionally flippant, slyly populist voice, accepting of kitsch and able to rework it into unintentional comedy, has become the default style not only of TV reviewers but also of viewers.
  • (12) I don’t just walk away when they say they’re going to die, to end their life … It’s not a flippant exchange, but it’s not in any way a doctor-patient involvement,” he said.
  • (13) Malala's courage and dignity come through strongly in a picture that is unexpectedly relaxed, almost flippant, given the circumstances.
  • (14) Hunt said today: "I made a flippant comment which I'm sure will be carved on my epitaph.
  • (15) Reading Kelsey Osgood’s memoir How To Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia , I came across yet another label, wannarexia, often used by eating disorder sufferers to disparagingly describe someone who actively and flippantly seeks out an eating disorder.
  • (16) Earlier he flippantly had thanked the BBC for his opportunity.
  • (17) Flippant remarks such as those you chose to use today only serve to reinforce the gap in understanding.
  • (18) He squirms into a shrug that indicates he's being both flippant and serious.
  • (19) Miami Beach--or "God's Waiting Room" as some have flippantly named it--has an overwhelming number of elderly people living on low incomes.
  • (20) The same year, in a flippant example of the use of the technology, an American billionaire reportedly paid a cloning expert $5m to recreate his favourite pet collie.