into thin air

Idioms  

1. Also, into the blue. Completely disappeared, as in The report was here on my desk and now it's gone, vanished into thin air, or I don't know where they've gone—into the blue, for all I know. Both of these hyperbolic expressions, often preceded by vanish as in the first example, use the rarefied atmosphere far above the earth as a metaphor for an unknown location. Shakespeare wrote of ghosts that “melted . . . into thin air” (The Tempest, 4:1). An antonym for both is out of thin air, meaning “from an unknown place or source.” For example, She made up this excuse out of thin air, or The car appeared out of thin air. However, out of the blue is not precisely an antonym (see under out of a clear blue sky).

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

into thin air

The dream of ambient computing is to be able to walk around and utter any request into thin air, like the high-powered voice computer system in “Her.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026

But the Rams’ 16-0 halftime lead literally vanished into thin air.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026

He said: "If you ask how a child can disappear, seemingly into thin air, are you then a conspiracy theorist?"

From BBC ● Nov. 4, 2025

This, despite getting nothing from her subject save for breadcrumb trails that went cold, leads that dissolved into thin air.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2024

The scene had been clear and distinct, and he really had seen Angela vanish into thin air.

From "Found" by Margaret Peterson Haddix

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