airmonger

English

Etymology

air +‎ monger

Noun

airmonger (plural airmongers)

  1. A hopeless visionary, a quixotic or unrealistic schemer.
    • 1670, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political, 9th edition, page 26:
      Check thy self, thou Air-monger; that with a madding thought, thus chasest fleeting shadows.
    • 1684, The Accomplish’d Lady, or Deserving Gentlewoman […], page 48:
      Thus Men puff up themselves as big as Pride and Vanty can make them, with a conceit of their own Meritoriousness; tho it be a sordid thing for a man to be the Herald of his own Praise: But it may be said of these Airmongers as it is of the Cameleon, which is […] Nothing but Lungs […]
    • 1966, Todor Zhivkov, anonymous translator, For Peace, Friendship and Socialism‎, page 574:
      At the same time, we would be no Marxists but philistines and air-mongers if we failed to take into consideration the other side of the question — the inevitability and exceptional importance for socialist construction of the material incentive of the masses with regard to the fruit of their work.
    • 1991, Eric W. K. Tsang, Something Is Missing in Beijing, →ISBN, page 33:
      It seemed that I was only an air-monger who built castles in the air. I failed! I lost! I was weak!
    • 2022, Christiane M. Andrews, Wolfish‎, →ISBN:
      She would be muttering to the ewes—Where has that old airmonger gone now? What daydreams have taken him wandering?
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