Vanish Into Thin Air
"To disappear completely and mysteriously, leaving no trace."
Built from two separate Shakespeare lines rather than one single source. In Othello, a character uses the phrase "vanish into air," while in The Tempest, Prospero says of the vanishing spirits, "these our actors... are melted into air, into thin air." Neither play actually contains the exact modern wording. The phrase as we know it today appears to have been assembled later, by writers combining "vanish" from one Shakespearean line with "into thin air" from the other; one of the earliest examples of the fully combined phrase is from The Edinburgh Advertiser in April 1822.
Myth vs. FactShakespeare gets full credit for this phrase constantly, but he never actually wrote 'vanish into thin air' in either play. Later writers stitched the modern wording together from two separate lines.
Sources: Shakespeare, Othello and The Tempest; combined phrase documented in The Edinburgh Advertiser (April 1822).
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