vanish into thin air
thin
verb[ I/T ]
us/θɪn/-nn-

thinverb[I/T] (BECOME FEWER)

to become fewer in number, or to make a group of things fewer in number:
[ I ]Traffic thins out after seven o’clock.
[ T ]An improving economy helped thin unemployment lines.

thin | Business English

thin
adjective
uk /θɪn/usthinner | thinnest
FINANCE, COMMERCE
if trading, etc. is thin, not many people are buying or selling shares, etc.:
Investor perceptions may decrease the value of high-risk bonds, especially in a thin market.
In another day of thin trading, the FTSE 100 rose 21 to 5269.5.
having only a small number of people or a small amount of something, especially money:
Wages are lower in the area, and union membership is thin.
Turnover was extremely thin.
a thin budget
 a thin margin/profit margin
COMMERCE
a situation in which there is only a small difference between the total cost of making and selling something and the price it is sold for, or between the total amount of money a company receives from sales and the total cost of producing all its products and services:
Cost is an issue in a business that operates on thin margins.
 be stretched thin
to not have enough money, people, supplies, etc. to operate, do a job, or provide what is needed:
Without more money, the programs would be stretched thin.
In the current economic climate, doctors and nurses are stretched thin and equipment is lacking in many of the clinics.
 the thin end of the wedgeUK
something that is not very harmful in itself but that will be the start of a harmful development:
The introduction of a fee for the service has been described as "the thin end of the wedge" by union leaders.
 thin on the groundUK
existing only in small numbers or amounts:
Good strategic leaders are very thin on the ground in UK companies.

Examples of thin

thin
Carrying ply fabric so that it is thinner includes holding; it's thus more than fabrics of comparable comprehensive.
Before we do this, we need to make them thinner.
The sequence comprises alternations of coarse tuff units that fine upwards and thinner lapilli-rich tuff horizons.
The haze of nostalgia is thinned by humor.
Between the world wars that tradition had thinned.
Even in a more overtly alienated mood, the marrow of the complexity of the love-nature relationship is by no means thinned.
Seedlings were thinned to one plant per hole.
Seedlings were thinned to three per pot (capacity 900 ml) and held in place with foam bungs.
Trees that have not been thinned and have set a large crop will therefore tend to abscise far more fruits than trees that were thinned.
Only barren, diseased and lodged plants were thinned at later stages of crop growth.
The wall of the left ventricle was again hypoplastic and thinned.
Eight seeds were planted, and subsequently thinned to three following germination.
If farmers have to maintain a desired population at harvest, soil moisture, fertility and pest management must be improved and thinning should be completed earlier.
Farmers delayed thinning primarily to obtain more fodder.
Consider "baldness," a favored concept among philosophers of vagueness, though hardly one that those of us with thinning hair like to dwell upon.
See all examples of thin
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.