HOT AIR

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does hot air mean? 

• HOT AIR (noun)
  The noun HOT AIR has 2 senses:

1. air that has been heated and tends to rise

2. loud and confused and empty talk

  Familiarity information: HOT AIR used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• HOT AIR (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Air that has been heated and tends to rise

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("hot air" is a kind of...):

air (a mixture of gases (especially oxygen) required for breathing; the stuff that the wind consists of)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Loud and confused and empty talk

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Synonyms:

empty talk; empty words; hot air; palaver; rhetoric

Context example:

mere rhetoric

Hypernyms ("hot air" is a kind of...):

bunk; hokum; meaninglessness; nonsense; nonsensicality (a message that seems to convey no meaning)

 Context examples 

If an atmosphere were present, hot air on the dayside would naturally expand, generating winds that would transfer heat around the planet.

(A Rare Look at a Rocky Exoplanet's Surface, NASA)

Inhaling the super-hot air can burn your lungs.

(Fires, Federal Emergency Management Agency)

A process that removes water or volatile solvents using large volumes of hot air to suspend a bed of solids.

(Fluid Bed Drying Method, NCI Thesaurus)

They found that the receptor is shaped like a hot air balloon.

(Structure of receptor involved in brain disorders, NIH)

This hot air reaches a height of up to 6,000 meters and from there joins the air currents of the Southern Hemisphere.

(Australian bushfire smoke drifts to South America, SciDev.Net)

Hot air isn't as good as gas, for if the air should get cold the balloon would come down in the desert, and we should be lost.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

We had hardly time to take our place behind a pile of luggage when it passed with a rattle and a roar, beating a blast of hot air into our faces.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But there is another way to make it float, which is to fill it with hot air.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)

The Tin Woodman had chopped a big pile of wood, and now he made a fire of it, and Oz held the bottom of the balloon over the fire so that the hot air that arose from it would be caught in the silken bag.

(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)