vacuously

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

vacuous +‎ -ly

Adverb[edit]

vacuously (comparative more vacuously, superlative most vacuously)

  1. In a vacuous manner, lacking thought.
    • 1915, Jack London, The Little Lady of the Big House:
      Here, in distress that was consternation, and in fear that was panic, excitedly bobbed up and down a cowboy in bearskin chaps, vacuously repeating the exclamation, "Oh God! Oh God!" []
    • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 211:
      He scowled vacuously, keeping at bay a horrible enlightenment on the mechanism of effort, which must drive into being a resistance equal to itself.
  2. (logic) Because of being a vacuous truth.
    The statement is vacuously true because P is false and P implies Q.

Translations[edit]