airling

English

Etymology

air +‎ -ling

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɛə(ɹ)lɪŋ/

Noun

airling (plural airlings)

1. (obsolete) A thoughtless, light-hearted person.

   Synonyms: airhead, luftmensch

   • 1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, →OCLC, (please specify the page):

     Some more there be, slight airlings, will be won
     With dogs and horses, or perhaps a whore.

2. An imaginary sprite, usually a beautiful woman, conjured out of thin air by a poet's imagination.
   • 1903, Eleanor Hull, “Three Irish Jacobite Poets”, in The New Ireland Review, volume 19, numbers pages 40–58, page 51:

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “airling”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)

Anagrams

• glairin, lairing, nargili, railing