evacuate
Americanverb (used with object)
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evacuates,
present (3rd person singular)
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evacuated,
past participle, past
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evacuating
present participle
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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
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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evacuatesimple
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evacuatessimple
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have evacuatedperfect
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has evacuatedperfect
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am evacuatingprogressive
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are evacuatingprogressive
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is evacuatingprogressive
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have been evacuatingperfect progressive
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has been evacuatingperfect progressive
Past
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evacuatedsimple
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had evacuatedperfect
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was evacuatingprogressive
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were evacuatingprogressive
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had been evacuatingperfect progressive
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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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.
See Examples For:
Norway could use the buses one day to evacuate the population in the event of an emergency.
From Barron's ● Oct. 17, 2026
Gulf producers to evacuate platforms last week, with more than 70% of offshore oil output shut in by Friday.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 15, 2026
Long Beach ordered some Peninsula residents to evacuate and Newport Beach temporarily closed its beaches and piers as Tropical Storm Rachel neared Southern California.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 11, 2026
Florida Senator Rick Scott encouraged residents in designated areas to evacuate as soon as possible, as he warned in a social media post: "DO NOT WAIT! Get out NOW!"
From BBC ● Oct. 10, 2026
If radioactive fallout started spreading through the sky, it would be Hall’s job to help evacuate people from local farms and villages.
From "Bomb" by Steve Sheinkin
But in France, Marielle Mourgeon was among 4,000 people forced to cut holidays short in the seaside village of Lacanau, near Bordeaux, after authorities ordered camping sites evacuates as a precaution.
From Barron's ● Jul. 28, 2026
They handed her over to the “White Angels,” a police group that evacuates citizens living on the front line, who then took her to a shelter for evacuees and contacted her relatives.
From Seattle Times ● Apr. 30, 2024
He said his administration evacuates about 100 people from the city daily on trains and buses on a voluntary basis.
From Reuters ● Feb. 23, 2023
Project Dynamo, a US-based non-profit that evacuates American civilians from risky situations abroad, has warned Mr Murekezi could face the death penalty in Donetsk.
From BBC ● Jul. 13, 2022
Urinary Troubles.—A healthy man usually evacuates about 30-40 ozs. of urine daily, the excretion being greater in the winter than in the summer, owing to the checked perspiration.
From Papers on Health by Edward Bruce Kirk
As the house had been evacuated earlier, no one was killed or injured.
From Barron's ● Oct. 15, 2026
The park was evacuated after the incident and remains closed as investigations continue.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026
Five production platforms and one drilling rig remained evacuated, according to the U.S.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026
About 4,700 people were evacuated in the City of London after a gas leak.
From BBC ● Oct. 13, 2026
Lower Manhattan, up to Houston Street, had been evacuated because of constant flooding.
From "The Dead and the Gone" by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Chevron said Wednesday that it has begun shut-in procedures at four of its assets in the Gulf, which the U.S. calls the Gulf of America, and is evacuating all associated personnel.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2026
County fire and sheriff’s officials “caused a major gap in communication and a lag in response,” the consequences of which would become clear as incident command fell behind on evacuating west Altadena.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2026
She said: "They told me to go as far as I could but they weren't evacuating people."
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026
The concentration of renewables projects in the north-western states of Gujarat and Rajasthan has also compounded the challenge of evacuating power in the face of such grid shortages.
From BBC ● Sep. 22, 2026
The airlock thought it was evacuating itself, but it was actually evacuating the whole trailer.
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
