Green’s Dictionary of Slang

airy adj.1

[SE ]

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

[UK]W. Warner Albion’s England Bk 15 xcviii (1612) 390: Ayrie Saints, our Hypocrits we meane [OED].
[UK]Dryden Don Sebastian 10: There’s th’ Amorous airy spark, Antonio; / The wittiest Woman’s toy in Portugal.
[UK]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.
[Ire] ‘The Distressed Rake’ Chap Book Songs 3: You’re not the maid that should me degrade, / Or any young man for being airy.
[UK] ‘Dicky Gossip’ Patriotic Songster 6: A gay barber so dapper and airy.
[US]Broadway Belle (NY) 1 Jan. n.p.: A very airy gentleman who is married (his wife living at a distance).
[US]W.H. Thomes Bushrangers 331: Deuced pretty girl, but rather airy for one who don’t know more than she does.
[US]‘Oliver Optic‘ Money-Maker 147: He isn't a bit airy, though he is the emperor of the biggest nation in Europe.
[US]‘Mark Twain’ Life on the Mississippi (1914) 511: The captains were very independent and airy – pretty ‘biggity,’ as Uncle Remus would say.
[US]Ballou’s Mthly Mag. 72 20: Mr. Lorimer's aunt [...] is very social, and not a bit airy.
[US]S.E. White Westerners 129: Never was such airy persilage heard in a mining camp before.
[Ire]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 .
C. Jackson [song title] Airy Man Blues .

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

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

3. casual.

[UK]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’.