vacancy
[vey-kuh n-see]
- the state of being vacant; emptiness.
- a vacant, empty, or unoccupied place, as untenanted lodgings or offices: This building still has no vacancies.
- a gap; opening; breach.
- an unoccupied position or office: a vacancy on the Supreme Court.
- lack of thought or intelligence; vacuity: a look of utter vacancy.
- Crystallography. (in a crystal) an imperfection resulting from an unoccupied lattice position.Compare interstitial(def 3).
- Archaic. absence of activity; idleness.
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Origin of vacancy
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for vacancy
Contemporary Examples
Not that a vacancy or appointments elsewhere in Washington may matter.
And if you want to see it get even worse, just wait until the president selects someone to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy.
But since the vacancy at the spy agency opened up, there are indications he may have had a change of heart.
Emanuel refused its call that a principal hire a laid-off teacher when three of them applied for a vacancy.
That ratio represents an improvement from the nadir of the recession, when there were 5.5 job seekers for every vacancy.
Historical Examples
And—perhaps you'd better not say you are applying until we find out if there is a vacancy.
KMary Roberts Rinehart
We now up helm, and steered for a vacancy among the British vessels.
Ned MyersJames Fenimore Cooper
It hasn't got no employment for its mind, and is always in a state of vacancy.
Life And Adventures Of Martin ChuzzlewitCharles Dickens
Another of the many shapes in which it started up about him, out of vacancy.
Life And Adventures Of Martin ChuzzlewitCharles Dickens
Then, as for knowing there was a vacancy, that also was money.
A Woman IntervenesRobert Barr
vacancy
- the state or condition of being vacant or unoccupied; emptiness
- an unoccupied post or officewe have a vacancy in the accounts department
- an unoccupied room in a boarding house, hotel, etcput the "No Vacancies" sign in the window
- lack of thought or intelligent awareness; inanityan expression of vacancy on one's face
- physics a defect in a crystalline solid caused by the absence of an atom, ion, or molecule from its position in the crystal lattice
- obsolete idleness or a period spent in idleness
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Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
Word Origin and History for vacancy
n.
c.1600, "state of being vacant," from Late Latin vacantia, from vacans (see vacant). Meaning "available room at a hotel" is recorded from 1953. Related: Vacancies.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper