| / English Dictionary |
VACANT
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Without an occupant or incumbent
Example:
the throne is never vacant
Classified under:
Similar:
empty (holding or containing nothing)
Derivation:
vacancy (an empty area or space)
vacancy (being unoccupied)
vacate (leave behind empty; move out of)
vacate (leave (a job, post, or position) voluntarily)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Void of intelligence or thought
Example:
a vacant mind
Classified under:
Similar:
empty (holding or containing nothing)
Context examples:
“There’s a man whose life might help you to trim your own course,” said my father, as we took our seats at a vacant table.
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Compressed into the very lowest vacant corner were these words—“I had not a spare moment on Tuesday, as you know, for Miss Woodhouse's beautiful little friend.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
He had not to wait and wish with vacant affections for an object worthy to succeed her in them.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when I arrived.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
So, in his fancy, may he see himself sometimes, gracing the vacant pedestal in Trafalgar Square, and adding one more to the horrors of the London streets.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
My excellent father died about five years ago; and his attachment to Mr. Wickham was to the last so steady, that in his will he particularly recommended it to me, to promote his advancement in the best manner that his profession might allow—and if he took orders, desired that a valuable family living might be his as soon as it became vacant.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
When a great office is vacant, either by death or disgrace (which often happens,) five or six of those candidates petition the emperor to entertain his majesty and the court with a dance on the rope; and whoever jumps the highest, without falling, succeeds in the office.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
He sat coiled in his armchair, his haggard and ascetic face hardly visible amid the blue swirl of his tobacco smoke, his black brows drawn down, his forehead contracted, his eyes vacant and far away.
(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was a piteous sight, the once rosy face so changed and vacant, the once busy hands so weak and wasted, the once smiling lips quite dumb, and the once pretty, well-kept hair scattered rough and tangled on the pillow.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Another source of income to Maria were her cows, two of them, which she milked night and morning and which gained a surreptitious livelihood from vacant lots and the grass that grew on either side the public side walks, attended always by one or more of her ragged boys, whose watchful guardianship consisted chiefly in keeping their eyes out for the poundmen.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
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