What's the difference between airy and wiry?

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.

Wiry


Definition:

  • (a.) Made of wire; like wire; drawn out like wire.
  • (a.) Capable of endurance; tough; sinewy; as, a wiry frame or constitution.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Like the strikingly similar landscapes of low wiry vegetation that you can now see in some former rainforest areas in the tropics, these habitats have been created through repeated cycles of cutting and burning.
  • (2) • Finally, if the London Marathon goes ahead on schedule, spare a thought during the day for one runner – a balding, wiry, smiling figure called Joe Derrett.
  • (3) Physically, he has a sort of wiry poise, often standing on the balls of his feet, but there is also something diffident, almost shyly polite, about him.
  • (4) On approach, he looks a bit like the ageing rock star he might have been (he was famously in punk band the Dreamboys with US chatshow host Craig Ferguson in his youth), wiry in dark glasses and heavy boots.
  • (5) Friendship Alfredo Scappaticci, small, barrel-chested with classic Mediterranean olive skin and wiry black hair, was born to an Italian immigrant family in west Belfast in the late 1940s and became a bricklayer.
  • (6) A white English family is described with autosomal dominant woolly wiry hair.
  • (7) At Elay, Oman Nygwo, a wiry 40-year-old in cut-off jeans, gives a tour of deserted huts and points to a line of mango trees that mark his old home on the banks of the Baro.
  • (8) A wiry 57, he arrives for lunch at Bar Pitti on Sixth Avenue, New York City, looking debonair in a cashmere Canali sports jacket.
  • (9) They include Ariyoshi Rune, a tall, wiry 47-year-old truck driver whose slicked-back hair and sideburns are inspired by his idol, Joe Strummer.
  • (10) Vardy weighs 73kg (11st 7lb) and with that wiry frame he looks as if he is not carrying an ounce of fat.
  • (11) "Now he is not just a skinny guy, he's a strong wiry guy," he adds, pride evident.
  • (12) Tall, wiry, a cigarette invariably dangling from his full lips, he had a lopsided grin and a nose that may have been broken in the ring, or the result of hitting himself with a rifle butt to end his military service.
  • (13) At Housmans, in Kings Cross, London – one of the longest-running radical bookshops in the country, launched by a group of pacifists – wiry co-manager Malcolm Hopkins, dressed head to toe in black, pulls up a chair in front of a row of Trotsky biographies and recounts the changes he's seen in the sector in past decades.
  • (14) Photograph: James Harkin for the Guardian We drop in on Amjad, a wiry fellow oppositionist who now considers both sides as bad as each other.
  • (15) Mom – Futurama Named by Forbes as fiction's fourth-richest individual, the ruthless MomCorp CEO is a wiry plutocrat, manufacturing endless platoons of killbots.
  • (16) Dembélé’s wiry strength, control and acceleration stood out while at times like these, it is impossible to look at Alli and realise that he is still only 19.
  • (17) I also like the maidenhair fern Adiantum aleuticum ‘Imbricatum’ ; its wiry black stems have fronds that radiate out like spreading fingers.
  • (18) Small, wiry and dark, Chowdhury recalls the bullets skimming past his right leg as the men opened fire – just as he can recollect the events leading up to the attack.
  • (19) For Herbie, a wiry-haired mongrel, it's a time of mixed emotions.
  • (20) The wiry-haired lawyer turned anti-gambling activist is standing in the gaming room of the Meadow Inn hotel, situated in Fawkner, an unremarkable northern suburb of Melbourne, Australia's second-largest city.