vacancy

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English

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Etymology

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From Late Latin vacantia.[1]

Pronunciation

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Noun

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vacancy (countable and uncountable, plural vacancies)

  1. An unoccupied position or job.
  2. An available room in a hotel; guest house, etc.
  3. Empty space.
    • 1993, James Michie, trans. Ovid, The Art of Love, Book II:
      Sky was set above earth, land ringed with sea, / Chaos retired to its own vacancy [...].
  4. A blank mind, unoccupied with thought.
    • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. [], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, [], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 2:
      ...—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?
  5. Lack of intelligence or understanding.
  6. (physics) A defect in a crystal caused by the absence of an atom in a lattice
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Translations

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References

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  1. ^ Douglas Harper (2001–2024) “vacancy (n.)”, in Online Etymology Dictionary.