in the air

1. 1.

   on everybody's mind

   “Christmas was in the air”

   Synonymsin everyone's thoughts

Questions about in the air

What does in the air mean?

in the air means "on everybody's mind".

What is another word for in the air?

Close synonyms include in everyone's thoughts. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is in the air a common word?

in the air is banded "Uncommon" — turns up in careful writing rather than conversation. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.