airy-fairy

airy-fairy

Insubstantial or impractical; wishful, fanciful, and unrealistic. My mom always had these airy-fairy ideas of us all traveling around the world, but we never had enough money for it. I don't think you've thought through the logistics of implementing such an airy-fairy scheme.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

airy-fairy

mod. insubstantial; of wishful thinking. I don’t care to hear any more of your airy-fairy ideas.
McGraw-Hill's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
See also:
  • fairy
  • live in cloud-cuckoo land
  • be in cloud-cuckoo land
  • cuckoo
  • be under the illusion that
  • have (one's) head in the clouds
  • have head in the clouds
  • have your head in the clouds
  • head in the clouds, have one's
  • with (one's) head in the clouds
References in periodicals archive
People still see coaching as airy-fairy or scary - especially in a corporate setting!
The move, which will cost around $2.7m, has been labelled "airy-fairy" and a diversion tactic at a time when unpopular austerity measures, including public spending cuts and tax hikes, are coming into force.
Those of you with particularly acute cultural antennae may have guessed that this pop combo do not deal in airy-fairy ballads with lute accompaniment.
While Hornby idolises the more fragile of the Arsenal team and mistrusts the multi-talented, Bhattacharya's hero is Gun-dappa Viswanath, a man capable of both glorious cover drives and airy-fairy wafts outside the off stump' Sunil Gavaskar, meanwhile, India's premier run-getter of all time, is berated for his slow scoring.
"Then I would play him in a sort of airy-fairy way...
Far too many nurses and midwives are qualifying without knowing the basics of human care, but they are very good at writing airy-fairy portfolios.
At times, this connection between sport and theory can feel somewhat forced and airy-fairy. But Foer put himself on a lot of airplanes, and several chapters stand alone as surgical strikes of intelligent reporting.
While again nothing new, they at least point in a less airy-fairy direction than the rest of the show, especially because they had to battle for attention with the hysterical bet-hedging that surrounded them.
This is not some airy-fairy issue for academicians and other assorted thumb-suckers.
``We can't afford to see another pounds 50 million squandered on an airy-fairy scheme to put an art gallery here in Cardiff.''
All that hard work on model plating plants that use less water and recycling plants that, allegedly, don't use any at all; typical airy-fairy stuff that keeps the consultants in their "jobs for the boys" and never had any relevance for real platters.
Ozone holes, greenhouse gases, global warming and now, an airy-fairy climate change.
As for his airy-fairy statement that the area is finally beginning to pick up, does he honestly think us Teesiders are a load of mugs?
A New York Winter's Tale Cert 12A THIS romantic airy-fairy tale thuds to earth with all the grace of Frankenstein's monster.
In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron has spoke about "lah-dih-dah, airy-fairy" attitudes towards NSA and has ordered a parliamentary inquiry into the Guardian newspaper's publication of Snowden's leaks.