> as lemmas

1701 T. Baker Humour of Age ii. 29 As I was..giving myself great Airs behind the Scenes.

1735 H. Fielding Old Man taught Wisdom 17 I must always give myself Airs to a Man I like.

1789 R. Burns Let. 4 Jan. (1985) I. 351 I give myself no airs on this, for it was mere selfishness on my part.

1863 C. Kingsley Water-babies i. 6 A stuck-up fellow, who gave himself airs.

1913 C. Mackenzie Sinister St. I. i. iv. 60 Mrs. Frith used to talk about ‘people as gave theirselves airs which they had no business to of done.’

1946 C. Bush Case Second Chance vii. 105 It was said she gave herself airs, and it was also hinted that she was no better—as they say—than she might be.

2001 J. Hamilton-Paterson Loving Monsters (2002) v. 62 Some people like to give themselves airs.

1715 J. Browne & W. Oldisworth State Tracts II. 46 So we have reason to look shy, And put on Airs, when they are by.

1787 J. H. Leigh New Rosciad 25 When affectation prompts the vulgar dame To put on airs.

1832 Deb. Congress 30 Jan. 203 I am aware that, at times, States have attempted to put on airs, and set up their own against federal opinions.

1860 O. W. Holmes Professor at Breakfast-table v. 132 None of them like too well to be told of it, but it must be sounded in their ears whenever they put on airs.

1915 W. S. Maugham Of Human Bondage cvii. 664 Fearing that the people he lived with would think he wanted to put on airs, he had always taken the greatest care to say nothing about his past occupations.

1952 T. Williams Summer & Smoke ii. i It is understandable that she might be accused of ‘putting on airs’ and of being ‘affected’.

1992 J. Dunning Booked to Die v. 32 Neff put on airs, oozed arrogance, and, until you passed muster, seemed aloof and cold.

1697 J. Vanbrugh Æsop i. 24 He made a thousand ugly Faces, Which (as sometimes in Ladies cases) Were all design'd for Airs and Graces.

1705 T. Walker Wit of Woman Prol. sig. A3^v New Cullies, (with stale Airs and Graces).

1847 W. M. Thackeray Vanity Fair (1848) xxxix. 357 Old Sir Pitt..chuckled at her airs and graces, and would laugh by the hour together at her assumptions of dignity and imitations of genteel life.

1877 Galaxy July 124/1 In opera, too, when Mlle. Diva sings, Miss Petrel, the contralto, affects the prima's airs and graces.

1930 in N. Shepherd Weatherhouse iii. 50 The Craigmyle ladies knew better than to be taken in with her airs and graces, that deceived the lesser intellects.

1971 S. Howatch Penmarric (1972) i. iii. 49 She was, after all, only a working-class woman, despite her airs and graces.

2001 J. Boyle Galloway Street 141 Coming here with your airs and graces, calling us tinkers.

1752 H. Walpole Let. 28 Oct. (1903) III. 124 Don't look upon this paragraph as a thing in the air.

1797 T. Jefferson Writings (1859) IV. 186 I consider the future character of our republic as in the air; indeed its future fortune will be in the air, if war is made on us by France.

1898 Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) 15 June 1/6 The matter may be left in the air for the president to take such action as the exigencies of the military situation may demand.

1910 J. Galsworthy Justice iv Keep him in the air; I don't want to see him yet... Keep him hankering.

1940 in T. Harrisson & C. Madge War begins at Home v. 107 I didn't hear anything for a long time. They sort of leave you in the air.

1853 C. Brontë Villette II. xxvii. 276 There was a kind of gossamer happiness hanging in the air.

1864 H. W. Longfellow Falcon Federigo 139 There was..that wild exhilaration in the air.

1875 A. W. Ward Hist. Eng. Dramatic Lit. I. iv. 325 The appreciation of Shakspere and the dramatic art perceptible in both these great writers was, as the phrase is, in the air,—in the air, i.e., breathed by those who stood on the height of European culture.

1879 F. W. Farrar Life & Work St. Paul I. App. iv. 642 These expressions and points of view were not peculiar to Philo. They were, so to speak, in the air.

1933 Amer. Mercury May 11/2 The first stirrings of extra-continental imperialism were in the air.

1965 N. Coward Diary 10 Oct. (2000) 611 They are nothing if not polite, but there is a sense of dégringolade in the air.

2000 Time 21 Feb. 42/2 The mood in the air, and on the graffitied walls of Belfast, suggests that the I.R.A.'s hard men still see the destruction of their arms as a humiliation, not a gesture of peace.

1865 M. Arnold Ess. Crit. viii. 261 No intelligent man can read the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus..without feeling that, as a speculative work, it is, to use a French military expression, in the air; that, in a certain sense, it is in want of a base and in want of supports.

1882 D. Gardner Quatre Bras, Ligny, & Waterloo 200 The extreme left of the Allied front..was, in military dialect, ‘in the air’—that is, protruded into the open country, without natural or artificial protection to its outer flank.

1923 R. Kipling Irish Guards in Great War I. p. x There was hardly an operation in which platoons..brigades, or divisions were not left with one or both flanks in the air.

1941 Hutchinson's Pict. Hist. War 19 Mar.–13 May 189 An Imperial division concentrated round Bengazi was left in the air when the German Panzer inrush swept aside the British armoured brigade.

1999 Geogr. Jrnl. 165 26/1 Often the flanks of the Allied advances [sc. in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign] were left ‘in the air’ and in danger of being outflanked.

1873 J. Ruskin Fors Clavigera III. xxxiv. 11 When he had saved enough to buy a knife or a good tool, he was quite up in the air.

1901 Daily Northwestern (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) 20 July 3/3 Father just went up in the air. Wear dress clothes at noon?

1928 E. Wallace Again Sanders ii. 49 Abiboo, who is a strict Mussulman, got up in the air because Bones suggested he might have been once a guinea-pig.

1930 Punch 21 May 577/3 Why the Prime Minister should have ‘gone up in the air’, as they say, because it appeared in print that Gandhi was about to be arrested..was not revealed.

1951 Syracuse (N.Y.) Herald-Amer. 7 Jan. 21/4 Labor Department officials went up in the air when they discovered DPA's line of authority included that department.

1979 M. Powell Servants' Hall ii. 4 When I told you that I quite liked Alice..you went up in the air and said she was an old witch.

1933 D. L. Sayers Murder must Advertise viii. 140 You might have let somebody know. I was left rather up in the air this morning.

1943 W. Temple Let. 8 June (1963) 80 The faith he professes in that book is very much up in the air and devoid both of practical and philosophical attachments.

1956 C. Wilson Outsider ii. 44 The reader is left feeling oddly ‘up in the air’ about it all. No happy finale, no dramatic tying up of loose ends.

2000 Two Twenty Oct. 72/5 The competition this year remains up in the air with only two races left on the calendar.

1900 G. Ade More Fables 85 (title) The Fable of why Essie's Tall Friend got the Fresh Air.

1924 P. Marks Plastic Age 202 ‘How about my studies?’ Hugh retorted. ‘I suppose you want me to give them the air.’

1934 P. G. Wodehouse Thank you, Jeeves x. 135 Surely you don't intend to give the poor blighter the permanent air on account of a trifling lovers' tiff?

1949 R. Graves Seven Days in New Crete xvii. 207 I couldn't change her views..nor could she convert me to hers, even when she threatened to give me the air.

1986 R. Campbell In La-la Land 41 Manny Ostrava hinted at it when he gave us the air.

1920 E. R. Wilson in P. F. Warner Cricket (Badminton Libr. of Sports & Pastimes) (new ed.) ii. 88 Slow bowlers are right to ‘give the ball air’ to a nervous or slow-footed batsman.

1929 Daily Express 7 Nov. 18/7 The ball was given plenty of ‘air’, the pace of the passing and the accuracy of handling a greasy ball reflecting the greatest credit on every one concerned.

1958 Times 10 Feb. 12/2 Conditions did not favour open play but both sides contrived to give the ball air.

1998 R. Hill On Beulah Height (1999) iii. v. 254 He gave it plenty of air so the batsman had lots of time to worry whether it was his googly or not.

1897 Strand Mag. Mar. 277/1 How far have you sent a telegraphic despatch on the air?]

1927 Observer 11 Dec. 16 The only New York church which is ‘on the air’.

1960 How TV Works (Granada TV) 9/1 Two months before Granada went on the air the first studio..was clear of builders' men.

2005 Dreamwatch Feb. 72/2 A brief 20-minute overview of the season's strengths and weaknesses, as well as the show's struggle to stay on the air.

1935 Down Beat Aug. 10/2 Bill Hogan and his orchestra [are] off the air and out of the Grove on an eight-week tour of RKO vaudeville houses.

1938 Times Herald (Dallas) 1 Apr. iii. 11 The Detroit station pull[ed]..Tommy off the air for ‘swinging’ Loch Lomond.

1956 A. H. Compton Atomic Quest 255 The Hiroshima radio went off the air.

1978 Globe & Mail (Toronto) 11 May 18/7 The ‘hot show’ declaration could take members of the technicians', journalists' and actors' unions off the show, and take it off the air.

1990 Police Mar. 30/3 The emergency broadcast system failed. Every television and radio station went off the air by 9:0 that night.

2003 Cult Times May 9/2 I still haven't given up on Firefly, which may seem strange since it's been off the air for months.