airmonger

plural airmongers

1. A hopeless visionary, a quixotic or unrealistic schemer.

   Check thy self, thou Air-monger; that with a madding thought, thus chasest fleeting shadows.

   1670, Owen Feltham, Resolves: Divine, Moral, Political, 9th edition, page 26

   4 more examples

   Thus Men puff up themselves as big as Pride and Vanty can make them, with a conceit of their own Meritoriousness; tho it be a sordid thing for a man to be the Herald of his own Praise: But it may be said of these Airmongers as it is of the Cameleon, which is […] Nothing but Lungs […]

   1684, The Accomplish’d Lady, or Deserving Gentlewoman […], page 48

   At the same time, we would be no Marxists but philistines and air-mongers if we failed to take into consideration the other side of the question — the inevitability and exceptional importance for socialist construction of the material incentive of the masses with regard to the fruit of their work.

   1966, Todor Zhivkov, anonymous translator, For Peace, Friendship and Socialism, page 574

   It seemed that I was only an air-monger who built castles in the air. I failed! I lost! I was weak!

   1991, Eric W. K. Tsang, Something Is Missing in Beijing, →ISBN, page 33

   She would be muttering to the ewes—Where has that old airmonger gone now? What daydreams have taken him wandering?

   2022, Christiane M. Andrews, Wolfish, →ISBN