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AIRS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Affected manners intended to impress others
Example:
don't put on airs with me
Synonyms:
airs; pose
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("airs" is a kind of...):
affectedness (the quality of being false or artificial (as to impress others))
II. (verb)
Sense 1
Present simple (third person singular) of the verb air
Context examples:
If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
But with me there is a limit, and when I find a man who keeps his cigars in the coal-scuttle, his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper, and his unanswered correspondence transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece, then I begin to give myself virtuous airs.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
'Maybe it's you,' says I, for I did not like the airs as he give 'isself. He didn't git angry, as I 'oped he would, but he smiled a kind of insolent smile, with a mouth full of white, sharp teeth. 'Oh no, they wouldn't like me,' 'e says.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Elizabeth, easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well; and Mary, at the end of a long concerto, was glad to purchase praise and gratitude by Scotch and Irish airs, at the request of her younger sisters, who, with some of the Lucases, and two or three officers, joined eagerly in dancing at one end of the room.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
What! would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or of any person I may say?
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
Don't like him, he puts on airs, snubs his sisters, worries his father, and doesn't speak respectfully of his mother.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
It was an even choice between this and the west-north-westerly course which the wind permitted; but the warm airs of the south fanned my desire for a warmer sea and swayed my decision.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
They conversed with one another through the means of an interpreter, and sometimes with the interpretation of looks; and Safie sang to him the divine airs of her native country.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
He wondered if there was soul in those steel-gray eyes that were often quite blue of color and that were strong with the briny airs of the sun- washed deep.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
And you may say, if you please, that I shall prepare my most plaintive airs against his return, in compassion to his feelings, as I know his horse will lose.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
