Meanings of airy nothings in English

Was he contending about airy nothings without local habitation or a name?

Let us not seek to penetrate beyond the airy nothings of every-day life.

The bed was covered with dress goods and the airy nothings that enhance a girl's beauty.

They seemed like airy nothings, which in rapture he would exchange for the peace of a tranquil conscience!

In such airy nothings did the credulous women put their trust, entranced by the voice of the sanguine charmer.

She still felt the tingle of his lips upon her hand, and still smiled at the airy nothings he said.

But, in the midst of the easy banter and jocose airy nothings of the modern dining-room, an object attracted Grace's eye.

The statuary executed sometimes with the most enrapturing art, the ideas of the poets,-gavesubstance to their shadows-formto their airy nothings.

During the ten centuries or more that our race has held local habitation and a name, it has been as airy nothings.

This great quality-theopposite of distrust and timidity, the ally of courage, the adjunct of a buoyant temperament-isnot fed upon airy nothings.

Were the poor fisherman in their toil alone real, and the rest airy nothings to whom Sicily gave a local habitation and a name?

The events and personages must be real and substantial, for he could not occupy himself seriously with airy nothings and creatures of pure fancy.

He walks, himself a ghost, among the ghosts of the past; and these " airy nothings" nod and smile, and shake hands, and say:

Airy nothings and classified motives...

"You will become a proficient chemist, converting the substance of my remarks to airy nothings through your gospel-retorts."