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^[1], 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^[2], →ISBN:

     She would be muttering to the ewes—Where has that old airmonger gone now? What daydreams have taken him wandering?