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This idiom means "Talking a lot without significant results". I was wondering if there was a specific idiom to say this. So far, I have found nothing but "hot air merchant".

Hawker65
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    Please note: professional translators refer to equivalent *meaning* and not equivalent terms. – Lambie Aug 29 '18 at 14:26
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    Also note that this question is asking for an idiom not a word. – Jason Bassford Aug 29 '18 at 14:28
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    Related and possible duplicate of these *uncountably many* entries in our votable-thesaurus.stackexchange.com game: https://english.stackexchange.com/q/453458 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/425013 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/383773 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/367828 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/342204 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/321485 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/316399 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/269467 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/250966 – tchrist Aug 29 '18 at 14:36
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    Still more related and possible duplicates from votable-thesaurus.stackexchange.com: https://english.stackexchange.com/q/250348 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/242760 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/232063 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/215722 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/203628 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/160126 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/107376 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/96684 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/94774 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/59867 https://english.stackexchange.com/q/13277 *The funnest game at SE!* – tchrist Aug 29 '18 at 14:37
  • @tchrist Wow. That's a lot of dupes – Mitch Aug 29 '18 at 15:03
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    Note that I'm not necessarily looking for an idiom, I mainly want to know if there is an equivalent and, if so, what is this said equivalent. I'm mainly interested in an equivalent for the first part of the definition because there are plenty of ways to express the second part. – Hawker65 Aug 29 '18 at 15:49
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    @Hawker65 Did you go through all of tchrist's links? If you didn't find an answer there,can you explain how your question is different from all of those? – Mitch Aug 29 '18 at 16:10
  • I did go through all of them and most of them were barely related to mine or were focussed on the second part of the definition which is more equivalent to "Noyer le poisson" than "Brasser du vent". – Hawker65 Aug 30 '18 at 07:16

2 Answers2

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Hot air is an expression that means

Empty talk that is intended to impress.

  • ‘they dismissed the theory as a load of hot air’

We generally say someone is full of hot air

Talking a lot, especially without saying anything of value or meaning.

  • Did the salesman tell you anything new, or was he just full of hot air?

or that they are blowing hot air

A person that has a lot of verbal wind that likes to sound off

Community
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bookmanu
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The single word bloviate, according to Merriam-Webster, means “to speak or write verbosely and windily”; Oxford gives “Talk at length, especially in an inflated or empty way”.

Wikipedia suggests that the word is particularly associated with political speeches in Ohio, and U.S. President Warren G. Harding was particularly good at it.

Jeff Zeitlin
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