Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Erected in the air; having no solid foundation; chimerical: as, an air-built castle; air-built hopes.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Erected in the air; having no solid foundation; chimerical.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Certainly, by contrast with his air-built image of himself as a worthy astronomer, received by all the world, and the envied husband of Viviette, the present imputation was humiliating.

    Two on a Tower 2006

  • She had smiled at it as such when Dorcas used to hint at it; but are there no castles in the clouds which we like to inhabit, although we know them altogether air-built, and whose evaporation desolates us?

    Wylder's Hand 2003

  • I was grieved for him; I was grieved for the overthrow of all our air-built castles; but, with the elasticity of youth, I soon recovered the shock.

    Agnes Grey 1931

  • They rarely summon the courage to attack those heroic dummies which are not soldiers but idols set up in a glorious battlefield that never existed except as a romance among the unimaginative; the fine figures and the splendid war that were air-built of a rapture.

    Waiting for Daylight 1915

  • Her time passed in listening to the complaints of the impoverished aristocrats, or in attending to the air-built projects of their triumphant adversaries.

    Memoirs of Mary Robinson Mary Elizabeth Robinson 1895

  • Certainly, by contrast with his air-built image of himself as a worthy astronomer, received by all the world, and the envied husband of

    Two on a Tower Thomas Hardy 1884

  • Before him lay an awful necessity -- the necessity of going to Beaubocage to tell those who loved him how their air-built castles had been shattered by this deed of his.

    Charlotte's Inheritance 1875

  • I tried to address myself to the volume before me, but my busy imagination had turned architect, and was erecting air-built tenements of the most magnificent and gorgeous nature.

    Odd Leaves from the Life of a Louisiana "Swamp Doctor" 1858

  • She had smiled at it as such when Dorcas used to hint at it; but are there no castles in the clouds which we like to inhabit, although we know them altogether air-built, and whose evaporation desolates us?

    Wylder's Hand Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 1843

  • But many a man who would have stood within a home dismantled, strong in his passion and design of vengeance, has had the firmness of his nature conquered by the razing of an air-built castle.

    Martin Chuzzlewit Charles Dickens 1841

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