Airy

How to spell airy

4 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce airy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does airy mean?

1. adjectiveOpen to fresh air and full of light; spacious and well ventilated.
2. adjectiveLight and delicate, or lacking solid substance; vague and unrealistic.

Airy in a sentence

• The new flat felt bright and airy after the cramped old one.

• The manager gave only airy assurances that funding would arrive.

• Large windows make the studio airy even on dull mornings.

• His plan was too airy to convince the investors.

Where does airy come from?

Language of origin: French

This adjective is built straightforwardly on the noun 'air', which English took from Old French 'air' in the medieval period, itself descended from the Latin 'aer' and ultimately the Greek 'aer', meaning the lower atmosphere or the breathable air close to the ground. The suffix '-y' is a native English ending used to form adjectives meaning 'full of' or 'having the quality of', as in 'cloudy' or 'sandy'. So 'airy' literally describes something full of air or open to the air, and from there it broadened to mean spacious, light, and well ventilated, and figuratively to mean delicate, insubstantial, or unrealistic, as in an 'airy promise'. The spelling trap is small but real: the word keeps the whole 'air' intact and simply adds '-y', so it is air-y, not the 'aery' or 'airie' that the eye sometimes wants. Note too the near-relative 'aerie', an eagle's nest, which shares the same Latin root but is spelled and used quite differently.

How the word is built

• air (the gas we breathe, open atmosphere)
• -y (adjective suffix meaning 'characterised by')