I wrote to my friend:
"Are you available sometime between the 27th of January and the 3rd of February? I plan to stay in Tokyo for a week to take part in a musical event and then unwind a little."
And the following was his reply:
Are you looking to "unwind" in Tokyo of all places?! (<- those are BIG air quotes!) You might as well run a full marathon to get you rejuvenated. (ha-ha) Seriously though — who am I to say no to that? I'll be sure to make some time. 😀
These two expressions "big air quotes" and "might as well" elude me. What do they each mean?
Best Answer
Air quotes refer to the physical act of mimicking the quotation mark symbol (") with one's hands. As in, this:
So, your friend did not use air quotes, he used scare quotes, because he used the quotes in writing, not in person. That was a slip on his part.
Function of scare quotes, according to Wikipedia:
It seems your friend used scare quotes to signal to you that when he writes "unwind," he does not mean the textbook definition of the word. Here is the textbook definition of "unwind":
There are several ways to interpret how your friend used scare quotes to distance himself from the above definition. If you don't know what he's getting at, you'll have to ask him directly for his intent. But it is safe to say that it involves something contrary to "relaxation," especially considering the extra attention he called to the scare quotes.
Definition of the idiom, you might as well (do something), according to the Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms: