wind-egg

And I hope that I may at last help to bring your own opinion into the light of day: when this has been accomplished, then we will determine whether what you have brought forth is only a wind-egg or a real and genuine birth.

Theaetetus 2007

And now that he is born, we must run round the hearth with him, and see whether he is worth rearing, or is only a wind-egg and a sham.

Theaetetus 2007

And now, let us examine together this conception of yours, and see whether it is a true birth or a mere wind-egg: — You say that knowledge is perception?

Theaetetus 2007

And your doing so is not “clever,” or even intelligent: it is self-congratulatory BS based upon wind-egg.

Think Progress » Chris Wallace Never Asked A Bush Administration Official Why They Demoted Richard Clarke 2006

For this reason, whenever a wind-egg is produced by any animal, the egg so forming has in it the parts of both sexes potentially, but has not the principle in question, so that it does not develop into a living creature, for this is introduced by the semen of the male.

On the Generation of Animals 2002

Conception of the true egg and conformation of the wind-egg take place rapidly with most birds; as for instance with the hen-partridge when in heat.

The History of Animals 2002

Under these circumstances the wind-eggs turn into fertile eggs, and the previously impregnated eggs follow the breed of the impregnator; but if the latter impregnation takes place during the change of the yellow to the white, then no change in the egg takes place: the wind-egg does not become a true egg, and the true egg does not take on the breed of the latter impregnator.

The History of Animals 2002

Ah, madonna, as in very remote times that notable jester, Love, popped out of Night's wind-egg, and by his sorcery fashioned from the primeval tangle the pleasant earth that sleeps about us, -- even thus, may he not frame the disorder of a fool's brain into the semblance of a lover's?

The Line of Love Dizain des Mariages James Branch Cabell 1918

First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was a wind-egg hatched in her bosom,

Studies in Song Algernon Charles Swinburne 1873

I could lay a wind-egg; but the world is not worth a wind-egg.

What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales Alfred Walter Bayes 1840