What is "insubstantial"

Usage examples of "insubstantial".

A less zealous, optimistic and dogged individual than he would not have even supposed that, so years after the Hearts had emigrated east from Vegas, that city of all American cities phantasmagoric and insubstantial as a delirium hallucination, there could be any trace, any vestigial memory of them.

My own was a more complex transgression, for I had taken joy in the doom of others, I perhaps had even engineered the doom of others, but even that was a subtle Jamesian sort of thing, in the last analysis fairly insubstantial.

Humphries was a shriveled little raisin of a man, with twiglike arms and legs that looked wholly insubstantial for supporting the fragile frame over which his loose-fitting coat and trousers were arranged.

On the insubstantial surface of the scrim a wavering light began to play, forming patterns like those on the undersurface of a pool.

The very name Warminster sounds vaguely horrific, hinting at an insubstantial clash of good and evil going on yesterday, today and evermore.

She fiercely brought her fist down on the table with a soft, insubstantial thud that made Rath draw back and set Miss Bricker shuddering once more.

He was a lean, middle-aged man, dressed in a loose cotton shirt and moleskin trousers, alert in manner, almost handsome, but the nose was a tad sharp, the eyes set a fraction too close together, the cheekbones not sufficiently prominent, the chin a touch insubstantial, too much forehead and not enough hair.

One could husband griffins as a farmer husbands geese, he supposes as he, too, drifts on the wind, thoughts shredding into insubstantial bits.

Her labored breathing made an erratic accompaniment to the other sounds in the cavern: whispering children, a light and steady snoring from off in the darkness, the insubstantial footfalls of unseen dancers and pipers caught forever in their ancient ceremony, painted upon the rock ceiling.

The phantasms directing the Hairy Men were in the same mold and of similarly insubstantial fabric, but the scale of this semblance had deceived her.

On the other hand, the Pipistrelles were so insubstantial, so little different from the void itself, any danger from them seemed like a product of overexcited human imagination.

Saying now this, now that, hinting of all things,-- Dreams, and desires, velleities, regrets, Faint ghosts of memory, strange recognitions,-- But all with one deep meaning: this is I, This is the glistening secret holy I, This silver-winged wonder, insubstantial, This singing ghost.

The ubiquitous waldoes, the insubstantial quality of the furniture, and the casual use of all walls as work or storage surfaces, gave the place a madly fantastic air.

On the currents of aether, insubstantial figures shaped in a vaguely humanlike form but composed of no mortal element danced in the fields of air through which these rivulets ran.

The ground on which they were standing turned glassy, insubstantial -- a smoky matrix in which something huge lay entombed.