evacuate
Americanverb (used with object)
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to leave empty; vacate.
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to remove (persons or things) from a place, as a dangerous place or disaster area, for reasons of safety or protection.
to evacuate the inhabitants of towns in the path of a flood.
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to remove persons from (a city, town, building, area, etc.) for reasons of safety.
to evacuate the embassy after a bomb threat.
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Military.
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to remove (troops, wounded soldiers, civilians, etc.) from a war zone, combat area, etc.
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to withdraw from or quit (a town, fort, etc., that has been occupied).
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Physiology. to discharge or eject as through the excretory passages, especially from the bowels.
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to deprive.
Fear evacuated their minds of reason.
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to produce a vacuum in.
verb
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(also intr) to withdraw or cause to withdraw from (a place of danger) to a place of greater safety
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to make empty by removing the contents of
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(also intr) physiol
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to eliminate or excrete (faeces); defecate
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to discharge (any waste product) from (a part of the body)
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(tr) to create a vacuum in (a bulb, flask, reaction vessel, etc)
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Conjugated Forms
Present
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has evacuatedperfect 3rd person singular
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have evacuatedperfect
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have been evacuatingperfect progressive
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are evacuatingprogressive
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is evacuatingprogressive 3rd person singular
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has been evacuatingperfect progressive 3rd person singular
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am evacuatingprogressive 1st person singular
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evacuatessingular 3rd person
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evacuatingparticiple
Past
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had evacuatedperfect
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was evacuatingprogressive singular
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were evacuatingprogressive plural
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had been evacuatingperfect progressive
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evacuatedparticiple
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evacuatedsimple
Future
Etymology
Origin of evacuate
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English, from Latin ēvacuātus “emptied out” (past participle of ēvacuāre, equivalent to ē- + vacuāre ); see origin at e- 1, vacuum, -ate 1
Explanation
To evacuate is to flee, like how people leave an area when a hurricane is coming. It also means to empty something completely. If you have to evacuate your home, something horrible is probably happening, like a natural disaster. People evacuate when something like a tornado or act of terrorism makes their homes unsafe. To evacuate also means to empty completely, in the bathroom-oriented sense of evacuating (emptying) your bowels. Similarly, if a chemist empties and therefore creates a vacuum in a flask, she has evacuated the flask. When you evacuate, you clear out.
Vocabulary lists containing evacuate
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There's No There There: Synonyms for "Empty"
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"EVACUATE NOW," an X post from the city warned.
From BBC • Dec. 5, 2024
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
