Hi,

The word 'vanished' is known to me as intransitive which means it takes no object. Then, a look at a dictionary seems to  tell otherwise: it seemed to be noted as transitive with the meaning "to cause to disappear".

Then, I saw a sentence that seemed to have this part:

... is vanished

Then, it got me thinking how that could be: a intransitive isn't supposed to have a passive. Is the transitive definition at play here? How would you know?    

To me (British English), "vanish" as a transitive verb is borderline, and is appropriate in only in very casual or jokey usage. I'm not sure how accepted it is in AmE.

Therefore, to me, "is vanished" looks like a mistake for "has vanished". If I was certain it wasn't a mistake then I would understand it as a passive form of transitive "vanish", which might, depending on context, merge into an adjectival use of the past participle of transitive "vanish". I don't see any other interpretation.

Without wanting to get into a "it's in the dictionary so it must be used" discussion, I just want to add that the transitive sense is very unfamiliar to me. It makes me think of a mother feeding her child: "Look, you made it all gone!"

Actually, I thought of one place where I wouldn't be surprised to encounter "is vanished": in attempted recreations of archaic dialogue.

Scene: mediaeval castle

Knight to servant: Forsooth! Fetch me my drinking goblet, thou varmint!

(Servant returns empty-handed)

Servant: Sire! It is vanished!

(Authenticity not guaranteed!)

Although it’s rare to see intransitive usage with “vanished” as it’s deemed ungrammatical, it certainly is interesting to see 45,000 entries of such use. Granted, some of these entries might not be even be considered suitable as references. Thinking out loud, I see the usage “the rainbow was vanished behind the clouds…”  is acceptable as “vanished” is being used as a past participle adjective, much like “ all hopes are lost ”, or “he was long gone..”.

If something causes another to vanish, I think it’s logical that “the rainbow was vanished behind the clouds…” be considered as correct usage. That’s my take.