in a puff of smoke
1
8.4
- idiom
- Informal
:
en un abrir y cerrar de ojos
- He then promptly vanishes in a puff of smoke like a ninja, and is not seen again for the rest of the game.
- vanish in a puff of smoke
- disappear in a puff of smoke
Examples
-
You swore by them, so you said, and then you chose the most expensive cartridge on the market, and then lo and behold, suddenly gone in a puff of smoke, flown to Italy, and I could never quite work out how you managed to fund that particular escapade.
-
Or would it vanish in a puff of smoke the moment he touched the controls?
Fiction book (1996) -
The water sizzles with electricity and the rats go up in a puff of smoke.
Fiction book (1995) -
He disappears in a puff of smoke, leaving the contract fluttering above the table.
Fiction book (1994) -
The ceremonies were elaborate: a fake saucer landed in a puff of smoke, followed by a parade of officials dressed in Martian costumes.
Blog text (31) -
She was a good witch, and she married the white mouse with the tiny red eyes and he must have nibbled her warts or something like that because she went up in a puff of smoke almost immediately.
-
The magician waved his hands, and in a puff of smoke, the rabbit disappeared.
-
She seemed to vanish in a puff of smoke when the lights went out.
-
At midnight, the figure in the doorway faded away in a puff of smoke.
Synonyms
26
6.3
Disappear completely with no trace left
25
5.8
Suddenly with no clear reason, like magic
1
5.0
Goes away as fast as it came
Suddenly and completely as if by magic
Antonyms
How Suddenly
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase literally evokes a small cloud of smoke accompanying an event, so a learner who knows 'puff' and 'smoke' and the locative 'in a' can infer a sudden, brief disappearance from the constituents. This visual/manner image is a common, productive metaphor across languages and follows transparent compositional structure, making the meaning predictable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
In a puff of smoke comes from magic shows. When a magician makes something disappear, it seems to go in a puff of smoke, so the phrase means 'to suddenly and mysteriously disappear'.