out of thin air
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
To appear or be created suddenly and unexpectedly
Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt
Xuất hiện hoặc được tạo ra đột ngột và không ngờ
Machine-translated — suggest a fix
Literally: from nothing
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
It's not pulling it out just out of thin air
Legislative proposals do not, however, materialise in the chamber out of thin air and they are not, furthermore, all of the same character.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “out of thin air” mean?
To appear or be created suddenly and unexpectedly Literally: from nothing
Is “out of thin air” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.