Wordcraft Home Page Wordcraft Community Home Page Forums Questions & Answers about Words "out of thin air"
Wordcraft Community Home Page Forums Questions & Answers about Words "out of thin air"Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| "out of thin air" | Login/Join |
| Member |
Where did the expression "out of thin air", meaning "out of nowhere", come from? I've searched a bit, but not much. Can anybody help me out? Tinman | ||
|
| Member |
quote: Yes, I know, the response is, "I'll be glad to help you out. What door did you come in?" Tinman | |||
|
Member |
According to Oxford Reference Online. http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t35.005414 thin air is an idiom meaning into (or out of) a state of being invisible or nonexistent | |||
|
| <Asa Lovejoy> |
As opposed to out of fat air? | ||
|
Member |
Somehow I missed this thread. I wondered if it had anything to do with the lower atmospheric pressure that is experienced in the mountains. I looked it up in Google and found this etymology of "air": " ETYMOLOGY: 13th Century: via Old French and Latin from Greek aer the lower atmosphere" Aren't there higher and lower atmospheric pressures? Why would "air" come from a word for "lower atmosphere"? Did I miss something? | |||
|
Copyright © 2002-12