Idioms: Air - pluck something out of the a.

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Idiom(s) of the day: Pull something out of the air

Variation(s): Pluck something from the air, pluck something out of the air, pick out of thin air

My category (Russian-to-English translation): Информация (Information)

Explanation(s):

Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms, 2004 (CCDI):

If you say that a suggestion or an amount is pulled out of the air or is plucked from the air, you mean that it hasn’t been considered carefully or using correct information. Other verbs are sometimes used instead of ‘pull’ or ‘pluck’.

This expression is often varied. For example, you can talk about ‘thin air’ instead of ‘air’.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

to say a name, number, etc. without thinking about it, especially in answer to a question

If you say that someone plucks a figure, name, or date out of the air, you mean that they say it without thinking much about it before they speak.

Out of nothing or from nowhere

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

to say something quickly, usually because a reply is expected, without having thought about it or made certain it is correct

Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary v4.7:

Translation(s):

CCDI:

Приводить какие-либо данные наобум, не выверив их; брать что-либо с потолка

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

выбрать наугад; выбирать из ничего

Multitran (www.multitran.ru):

Multilex (www.multilex.ru):

Examples:

CCDI:

She pulled a figure out of the air, an amount she thought would cover months’ rent on an office.

So few buildings are coming to market that accurate valuations are becoming almost impossible to make. Numbers are simply being plucked out of the air.

I never felt tempted to pick figures out of the air.

I don’t like pulling decisions out of thin air and getting them wrong.

Lingvo (www.lingvo.com):

I just plucked a figure out of the air and said: 'Would £1 000 seem reasonable to you?'

The teacher scolded Dick because his story was made out of thin air.

Babylon (www.babylon.com):

"Where did you get those figures from?" "Oh, I just plucked them out of the air."

Is this just a figure she plucked out of the air?

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) v4.0:

Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary v4.7:

British National Corpus (BNC), Mark Davies (http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc/): [pull] * out of the air; [pluck]* out of the air, [pull]* from the air, no hits; [pluck] * from the air, total 1 (literal)

Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), Mark Davies (http:// www.americancorpus.org/): [pull] * out of the air, total 6 (4 literal); [pluck] * out of the air, total 2

Senator Nunn claimed the other day that people in Washington are just pulling figures out of the air and that there isn't a rational within which all these people coming up with various figures including the Pentagon are operating.

The whole thing is very exciting to me. When I try different things, pull something out of the air, and it works, I get really excited.

"Forgive me, Anarae," he apologized. "I plucked it out of the air."

Well, I may call and say, why don't you give us the real reason why you did this, because it looks like you did it to help your wife's Senate race and almost anybody with any brains would conclude that is the reason you did it. Because you just don't pluck this out of the air with only three grants of clemency out of 4,000 requests and, you suddenly grant clemency to 16 known terrorists who literally were making bombs, that were disseminating weapons and bullets and were convicted of conspiracy, terrorism and the possession of explosive material.

My companion project: An Idiom a Day (www.twitter.com/AVDemid): When facing a translation problem, and finding no help in your dictionaries, do you pull your solution out of the air or cry for help?