vacancy
nounCA, US, UK /ˈveɪkənsi/ · AU, NZ /ˈvæɪkənsi/
Etymology From Late Latin vacantia. Doublet of vacance.
1
An unoccupied position or job.
- Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.1965, Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution:
2
An available room in a hotel; guest house, etc.
3
Empty space.
- The following account of Cavendish is from one of our most accomplished chemists, who communicated it orally to Mr. Tomlinson, from whom I received it. “When I was a very young man—a new Fellow of the Royal Society—I always looked upon it as a great honour to be noticed by Cavendish, and so did the other young members of the society. We used to dine at the Crown and Anchor, and Cavendish often dined with us. He came slouching in, one hand behind his back, and taking off his hat (which by the bye he always hung up on one particular peg), he sat down without taking notice of anybody. If you attempted to draw him into conversation he always fought shy. Dr. Wollaston’s directions I found to succeed best. He said, ‘the way to talk to Cavendish is never to look at him, but to talk as it were into vacancy, and then it is not unlikely but you may set him going!’”1851, George Wilson, The Life of the Hon. Henry Cavendish, page 169:
- Sky was set above earth, land ringed with sea, / Chaos retired to its own vacancy ….1993, James Michie, trans. Ovid, The Art of Love, Book II
4
A blank mind, unoccupied with thought.
- ...—who has not looked back to the past with that passion of hopelessness, which deems that life can never more be what it has been,—with a consciousness that the dearer emotions are exhausted, while in their place have arisen but vacancy and weariness?1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 2:
5
Lack of intelligence or understanding.
6
Natural sciences, Physical sciences, Physics A defect in a crystal caused by the absence of an atom in a lattice
- Derived terms
- anion vacancy, divacancy, monovacancy, multivacancy, semivacancy, trivacancy