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
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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Zilch, Zip, Nada: Words For Nothing
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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.
See Examples For:
The fire has moved quickly through the region’s sprawling pine forests, forcing more than 220,000 residents and vacationers to evacuate at the height of the tourist season.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 29, 2026
Wildfires are tearing through France and Spain, forcing more than 300,000 people to evacuate their homes.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
Earlier he said there were no plans to evacuate the population of about 850,000.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
Some people in Le Barp, a village around 30 kilometres south of Bordeaux, refused to evacuate, others said they did not know where to go.
From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026
Given the rain and the wind, it was impossible to try to evacuate them in the canoe.
From "Zeitoun" by Dave Eggers
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
Vlad Mahovsky, a volunteer who evacuates civilians, showed the BBC a message from a resident a few days ago.
From BBC ● Jan. 29, 2024
And he evacuates his bowels into a cistern sunken in the middle of the living room.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 14, 2023
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
During the last night the little garrison evacuates the upper redoubt, and is seen coming towards the work.
From The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 68, June, 1863 by Various
"The explosion occurred after the customers and staff had evacuated," a spokesman for the mall's operator Aeon told AFP.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker, said its local subsidiary activated emergency procedures and evacuated all personnel at its Kumamoto facility.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 28, 2026
In the Madrid region alone, more than 56,500 people have been evacuated since the fires broke out last week.
From BBC ● Jul. 28, 2026
Jo Barnes describes how she and her family evacuated their home which has survived the fires.
From BBC ● Jul. 27, 2026
And because Alyce hasn’t been able to confirm that he’s been safely evacuated, she finds herself pulled slightly off-route and flying in the direction of his nursing home.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
The troops will assist with evacuating residents from areas threatened by the fires and help safeguard homes left unattended during the emergency, the defence ministry said.
From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026
Firefighters have been battling to hold the blazes back from Bordeaux, which lies at the heart of the world-famous wine-growing region, with authorities evacuating thousands of people from villages close to the city.
From Barron's ● Jul. 26, 2026
Gillam-Kirton's mother had texted her that evening to say they were evacuating, but the couple had not been heard from since.
From BBC ● Jul. 14, 2026
Even in the worsening atmosphere, Shekhova was packed but still indecisive about evacuating.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026
“They’re evacuating the younger kids and everyone’s meeting in the Great Hall to get organized,” Harry said.
From "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling
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.
