luftmensch
luftmensch noun: a person who is highly intellectual or contemplative but detached from practical affairs, especially the need to earn a living.
Noun
luftmensch (plural luftmenschen)
- A person who is highly intellectual or contemplative but detached from practical affairs, especially the need to earn a living.
- My wife is such a luftmensch she missed our anniversary dinner because she was too busy reading her books!
- Chagall was a luftmensch, he says, a man of the air...March 24, 2007, Helen McLean, “Marc of Distinction”, in The Globe and Mail, Books, page D6
- A beggar, a petty trader, a peddler, and various types of paupers.
Forms of luftmensch
| plural | luftmenschen |
|---|
Origin of luftmensch
From Yiddish לופֿטמענטש (luftmentsh), from לופֿט (luft, “air”) + מענטש (mentsh, “person”). Compare German von Luft und Liebe leben (“to disregard the practical matters of life”, literally “to live on air and love”), German Luftikus (“impractical, quixotic, or careless person”). The word first appeared in Yiddish literature in the 1860s (Nicolas Vallois, The Luftmentsh as an economic metaphor for Jewish poverty: a rhetorical analysis).
Questions about luftmensch
- What does luftmensch mean?
- Luftmensch means a person who is highly intellectual or contemplative but detached from practical affairs, especially the need to earn a living.
- What part of speech is luftmensch?
- Luftmensch is a noun.
- What is the plural of luftmensch?
- The plural of luftmensch is luftmenschen.
Words near luftmensch in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: luftmensch (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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Cite this entry: “luftmensch.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/luftmensch. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.