Ah! You've hit the nail on its mist-enshrouded head, Maa'! The absence of one very simple three-lettered word generated so many unnecessary ones, mine included. Now that's that, huh?

Edit: But it's still a strange metaphor. There are those mists of coincidence already hovering out there somewhere in Coincidence World. And there's the grammarian tracking down a usage and its pedigree--and his search? His delvings into some usage evaporates. OK. It evaporates. And the place into which it evaporates is this misty area of coincidence. This is a misty metaphor and I am blind inside of it. Wordminstrel: Would you please either PM me the context out of which the metaphor came or paste it here?