intervacuum

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English

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Etymology

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Formed as inter- +‎ vacuum, but compare the Latin intervacō (I am empty between).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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intervacuum (plural intervacua)

  1. An intervening empty space; a vacant interval.
    • 1827 April, Samuel Taylor Coleridge [aut.], and Kathleen Coburn and Anthony John Harding [eds.], The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, volume V: “1827–1834”, part 1: ‘Text’, (2002, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, entry 5504: ff11ᵛ–12
      In the distribution of the Animals themselves, the Subjects and the products of this energy, into the principal Classes, we do not suppose chasms & intervacua or empty Interspaces between the Classes, but ascend from a lower to a higher by an interliminary — and the same principle holds good in the Dynamics of Organic Nature, and the Enumeration and the Order of the three Constitutive Forms of the Vital Energy.

Adjective

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intervacuum (not comparable)

  1. (physics) Between regions of vacuum (or of very low pressure)
    • 1990, Gerardo Beni, Vacuum mechatronics:
      UHV technique for intervacuum sample transfer...
    • 2003, Gerardo Giruzzi, EC-12: proceedings of the 12th Joint Workshop on Electron Cyclotron Emission...:
      The intervacuum space was monitored continuously, a change in pressure implied to a rupture of the isolation between this volume and either the torus or waveguide vacuums.

References

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  • † Interva·cuum” listed on page 423 of volume V (H–K), § ii (I) of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles [1st ed., 1901]
      † Interva·cuum.Obs. rare. [Inter- 2 b. Cf. L. intervacāre to be empty between.] An intervening empty space; a vacant interval. [¶] 1627 E. F. Hist. Edw. II (1680) 24 The intervacuum of their absence.
  • †interˈvacuum” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd ed., 1989]