emptiness

[emp-tee-nis]

noun

1. the fact or state of containing nothing or of being without the usual or appropriate contents.

   All morning the emptiness of the cupboard, the thought of the house without even tea or butter, had been troubling him.

2. the fact or state of being without human occupants or human activity.

   A broad, slanting patch of sunshine cut across the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the church.

3. empty or barren space; void.

   If we leave today we can reach the outpost by the 27th—through another 800 miles of flat, windy emptiness.

4. the fact or quality of being without force or effect; hollowness.

   Continued support for brutal regimes reveals the hypocrisy and emptiness of the administration’s professed goal of spreading democracy.

5. the quality or feeling of being without significance or purpose; meaninglessness.

   In the 21st century we are more likely to experience aimlessness and emptiness than guilt.

6. the fact or quality of being unoccupied by useful work or activity; idleness.

   An active man, not yet sixty, he was unused to the emptiness of his days after he retired.

7. the fact or quality of being completely spent or drained emotionally by trauma.

   Many women describe a feeling of numbness and emptiness following a miscarriage.

Other Word Forms

• self-emptiness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of emptiness¹

empty ( def. ) + -ness ( def. )

Example Sentences

There is only emptiness: a hollow space where a heart should be, ready to be filled with cold, hard cash.

Read more on Salon

The score goes on for the next hour to allude to a surreal emptiness.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

The plants in the thicket stretch and grow over the new slice of emptiness.

Read more on Literature

Though it approaches its subject with a certain formal neutrality, the title, a phrase now synonymous with political emptiness, does suggest a point of view.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Now, lying thick and still under the cover of plastic seats, the cavernous emptiness of the place mirrors the void left since it is modern reincarnation in the late 1990s.

Read more on BBC

Related Words

• desolation 
• vacuum