Word.ws English Dictionary

balloonacy

balloonacy noun: an excessive mania for hot-air balloons.

Noun

balloonacy (uncountable)

  1. (nonce-word) An excessive mania for hot-air balloons.
    • We live in an age of balloonacy. Only a few weeks ago I sent you the account of M. Nadar and his 'Géant,” “the greatest balloon in the world;” now M. Eugène Godard has built an 'Aigle,' by the side of which the 'Giant' is a mere dwarf.1864 February 20, The Daily Telegraph
    • Horace Walpole was severe on this new whimsy of balloonacy, which was only chilled, not extinguished, by De Rosière's catastrophe.1865, Charles Robert Leslie, Tom Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, page 479

Origin of balloonacy

Blend of balloon + lunacy.

Questions about balloonacy

What does balloonacy mean?
Balloonacy means an excessive mania for hot-air balloons.
What part of speech is balloonacy?
Balloonacy is a noun.

Words near balloonacy in the dictionary

  1. balloon tyre
  2. balloon tyres
  3. balloon vine
  4. balloon vines
  5. balloon-back
  6. balloonacy
  7. balloonatic
  8. balloonatics
  9. ballooned
  10. ballooneer
  11. ballooneers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: balloonacy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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