- airy
- airy, aerial, ethereal can all mean as light and insubstantial as air.Airy seldom suggests a transcendent quality; in its widest sense it implies little more than immateriality{
the poet’s pen . . . gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name— Shak.
}When applied to persons, their words, or their manners, it may imply an affectation of grandeur or putting on airs{replied with airy condescension
}mere affectation of nonchalance{airy refusal to take good advice
}When used of motion or movements, it suggests lightness and buoyancy{the slight harebell raised its head, elastic from her airy tread— Scott
}Aerial in figurative use is found chiefly in poetry where it usually connotes impalpability, extraordinary delicacy, or elusiveness, and is applied to things rather than to persons{mountains . . . fair of aspect, with aerial softness clad— Wordsworth
}{the aerial hue of fountain-gazing roses— Shelley
}{fine and aerial distinctions— Milman
}Ethereal implies not the atmosphere surrounding the earth but the rarefied air once believed to fill the heavenly regions and so imputes a celestial or supramundane character to the person or thing it qualifies. Sometimes it suggests an unearthly translucency{fire . . . without heat, flickering a red gold flame . . . ethereal and insubstantial— Woolf
}{so . . . ethereal in appearance with its cloud colors, that . . . even . . . the most beautiful golden shades . . . seemed heavy and dull and dead-looking by comparison— Hudson
}Sometimes, especially when referred to persons, their words, or their thoughts, it suggests disembodied spirit or apartness from material interests{the ethereal quality of Shelley’s poetry
}{at times he tends to fall into excessive subtlety, to be too vaporous and ethereal— Babbitt
}Analogous words: tenuous, rare, *thin: delicate, dainty, exquisite (see CHOICE): light, volatile, frivolous (see corresponding nouns at LIGHTNESS)Antonyms: substantial
New Dictionary of Synonyms. 2014.
