vacuous
[vak-yoo-uh s]
- without contents; empty: the vacuous air.
- lacking in ideas or intelligence: a vacuous mind.
- expressing or characterized by a lack of ideas or intelligence; inane; stupid: a vacuous book.
- purposeless; idle: a vacuous way of life.
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Origin of vacuous
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Related Words
blank, drained, dull, dumb, foolish, half-baked, inane, minus, shallow, silly, stupid, superficial, vacant, void, uncomprehending, airheaded, birdbrained, emptied, lamebrained, unreasoningExamples from the Web for vacuous
Contemporary Examples
Smith speaks with perfect articulation and a vacuous undertone laces her words.
The assumption that feminism comes in a neat, Xeroxable package is gravely outmoded and vacuous.
Speaking of Daisy, Mulligan does as elegant a job as possible portraying such a vacuous character.
The Great Gatsby, Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Is a Relentless Assault on the SensesMarlow Stern
May 8, 2013
In America, however, there is a stubborn strain of vacuous unawareness that reflects no credit on American society.
Historical Examples
A sudden animation replaced the vacuous stare of the blue eyes.
The Fortune HunterLouis Joseph Vance
In less than a fortnight he had fallen to vacuous imbecility.
Those eyes were the shiny, vacuous, soulless eyes of a madman!
The Floating Island of MadnessJason Kirby
He was slouching along with his hands in his pockets, and a vacuous look in his face.
Novel NotesJerome K. Jerome
Again a wait, while they looked at one another with vacuous eyes.
The Cross-CutCourtney Ryley Cooper
vacuous
- containing nothing; empty
- bereft of ideas or intelligence; mindless
- characterized by or resulting from vacancy of minda vacuous gaze
- indulging in no useful mental or physical activity; idle
- logic maths (of an operator or expression) having no import; idle: in (x) (John is tall) the quantifier (x) is vacuous
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Word Origin
C17: from Latin vacuus empty, from vacāre to be empty
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Word Origin and History for vacuous
adj.
1640s, "empty," from Latin vacuus "empty, void, free" (see vacuum). Figurative sense of "empty of ideas" is from 1848. Related: Vacuously; vacuousness.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper