luftmensch.
A person who is highly intellectual or contemplative but detached from practical affairs, especially the need to earn a living.
Meaning & usage
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!
A beggar, a petty trader, a peddler, and various types of paupers.
Where this word comes from
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).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.