in vacuo

English

Etymology

From Latin in vacuō (“in vacuum”).

Adverb

in vacuo

1. In a partial or full vacuum.

   The distillation is performed in vacuo to avoid decomposition of the compounds under study.

2. (figurative) Out of context.
   • 1965, Attila Zohar, Kings Cross Black Magic, Sydney: Horwitz Publications, page 106:

     Their own mental capacity to examine what they saw was sufficient. Nothing was obscene in vacuo.

   • 1980, George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, chapter 24, in Metaphors We Live By:

     But we don't understand sentences like this in vacuo. We understand them relative to certain larger categories of experience […]

Further reading

• “in vacuo”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.