hot air
empty, exaggerated, or pretentious talk or writing: His report on the company's progress was just so much hot air.
Origin of hot air
1Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use hot air in a sentence
And to let you comprehend whether you are heir to that civilization or spouting hot air about it.
My Commencement Speech to Rutgers’ Geniuses: Go Forth and Fail | P. J. O’Rourke | May 18, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTHe would ride across the District of Columbia on his black horse, Dan Webster, or survey the countryside from a hot-air balloon.
Making Lincoln Sexy: Jerome Charyn’s Fictional President | Tom LeClair | March 6, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTA ride in a ski lift crafted to look like a flying hot-air balloon even brought visitors to the vantage point of a flying monkey.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road…to North Carolina | Nina Strochlic | February 12, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTFleks of cotton rose in the hot air and made little blazes here and there.
An occasional tour bus or motorbike roars through, and, at dusk, hot air balloons drift lazily overhead.
Temple Hopping in the Paradise of Bagan, Burma | Nina Strochlic | December 5, 2013 | THE DAILY BEAST
Through these flues were forced currents of hot air from a blaze in a large fireplace at one end of the house.
Our Little Korean Cousin | H. Lee M. PikeThe chimney was at the other end, and thus a draught of hot air constantly passed beneath the floors in cold weather.
Our Little Korean Cousin | H. Lee M. PikeThe hot air passed as indicated by the arrows, escaping through openings near the roof in the outside wall of the apodytrium.
The Private Life of the Romans | Harold Whetstone JohnstonShe felt dimly the difference between the hot air of the dance-hall and the warm air out of doors.
Blazed Trail Stories | Stewart Edward WhiteThe roof, of thin iron plate, is provided with a ventilator to allow of the escape of hot air.
Scientific American Supplement No. 299 | Various
British Dictionary definitions for hot air
informal empty and usually boastful talk
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Other Idioms and Phrases with hot air
Empty, exaggerated talk, as in That last speech of his was pure hot air. It is also put as full of hot air, as in Pay no attention to Howard—he's full of hot air. This metaphoric term transfers heated air to vaporous talk. [Late 1800s]
The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary Copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
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