hot air

noun Informal.
empty, exaggerated, or pretentious talk or writing: His report on the company's progress was just so much hot air.

Origin:
1835–45 for literal sense

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2013.
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Collins
World English Dictionary
hot air
 
n
informal empty and usually boastful talk

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
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00:10
Hot air is always a great word to know.
So is interrobang. Does it mean:
the offspring of a zebra and a donkey.
a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.
Slang Dictionary

hot air definition


  1. n.
    boasting; lying; nonsense. : That's just a lot of hot air. Ignore it.
Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions by Richard A. Spears.Fourth Edition.
Copyright 2007. Published by McGraw Hill.
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American Heritage
Idioms & Phrases

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 Howardhe's full of hot air. This metaphoric term transfers heated air to vaporous talk. [Late 1800s]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer.
Copyright © 1997. Published by Houghton Mifflin.
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Example sentences
The point was rhetoric is bull as it is it as empty as the hot air of opinion.
Get the same bird's-eye view from the basket of a hot air balloon.
Even the skylights automatically pop open to vent hot air.
The anti-icing system prevents ice from forming by blowing hot air from within
  the compressor of the engine.
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