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

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

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, visiting Israel, warned that people in Rafah with nowhere to go could not "simply vanish into thin air."

From BBC • Feb. 14, 2024

Her $990 Margiela Mary-Jane Tabis have vanished into thin air like a fairy godmother after she grants all wishes.

From Salon • Sep. 9, 2023

We should be thankful Vaughn didn’t vaporize into thin air, given the Bermuda Triangle eeriness of this dis-harmonic convergence.*

From Los Angeles Times • Aug. 30, 2023

It was like he had disappeared into thin air.

From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz