into thin air
prep_phraseEtymology Popularized by Shakespeare, see quotations.
1
Idiomatic Immediately and inexplicably out of sight.
- He seemed to vanish into thin air.
- Our Reuels now are ended: Theſe our actors, / (As I foretold you) were all Spirits, and / Are melted into Ayre, into thin Ayre, / And like the baſeleſſe fabricke of this viſion1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i], page 15, column 1:
- Related terms
- out of thin air, vanish to the four winds