Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US) inclined to pretentiousness or putting on airs.

1606		W. Warner Albion’s England Bk 15 xcviii (1612) 390: Ayrie Saints, our Hypocrits we meane [OED].
1690		Dryden Don Sebastian 10: There’s th’ Amorous airy spark, Antonio; / The wittiest Woman’s toy in Portugal.
1696		G. Granville She-Gallants I i: Adzooks, adzooks, the Town swarms with them; one is call'd Vaunter, and the other Sir Iohn Airy, Fops, with great Estates.
c.1701		N. Ward Reformer 37: [A] Young Awkard, Rude Lump of Flesh, drag’d up at a Milk-Pale, before a Gentile, Airy, Prudent Lady of the Town.
1788		‘The Distressed Rake’ Chap Book Songs 3: You’re not the maid that should me degrade, / Or any young man for being airy.
1805		‘Dicky Gossip’ Patriotic Songster 6: A gay barber so dapper and airy.
1855		Broadway Belle (NY) 1 Jan. n.p.: A very airy gentleman who is married (his wife living at a distance).
1873		W.H. Thomes Bushrangers 331: Deuced pretty girl, but rather airy for one who don’t know more than she does.
1874		‘Oliver Optic‘ Money-Maker 147: He isn't a bit airy, though he is the emperor of the biggest nation in Europe.
1883		‘Mark Twain’ Life on the Mississippi (1914) 511: The captains were very independent and airy – pretty ‘biggity,’ as Uncle Remus would say.
1890		Ballou’s Mthly Mag. 72 20: Mr. Lorimer's aunt [...] is very social, and not a bit airy.
1901		S.E. White Westerners 129: Never was such airy persilage heard in a mining camp before.
1914		G. Fitzmaurice Pie-Dish in Five Plays (1917) 151: It isn't right the old man is, for wasn’ there a strain of lunacy in the Pringles of Lisroe? [...] Indeed there was not, but they being a little airy in themselves the same as the Carmodys of Moinveerna .
1924		C. Jackson [song title] Airy Man Blues .

2. (US) insubstantial, lacking lit. or fig. solidity.

1831		Albany Microscope (NY) 1 Dec, n.p.: [T]he airy and speculative belief of the ancients fled before the philosophy of the moderns.
1839		Eve. Signal (NY) 2 Dec. n.p.: Philosophy [...] is for all but a few as airy as the rumor of a magic garden .
1840		Eve. Signal (NY) 27 Jan. n.p.: I cannot dine on airy schemes.

3. casual.

1936

Wodehouse ‘Tried in the Furnace’ in Young Men in Spats 47: ‘What’s all this?’ asked Pongo. Barmy tried to be airy. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just the local School Treat’.