VACANCY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does vacancy mean? 

• VACANCY (noun)
  The noun VACANCY has 2 senses:

1. being unoccupied

2. an empty area or space

  Familiarity information: VACANCY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VACANCY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Being unoccupied

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Hypernyms ("vacancy" is a kind of...):

emptiness (the state of containing nothing)

Derivation:

vacant (without an occupant or incumbent)

Sense 2

Meaning:

An empty area or space

Classified under:

Nouns denoting two and three dimensional shapes

Synonyms:

emptiness; vacancy; vacuum; void

Context example:

without their support he'll be ruling in a vacuum

Hypernyms ("vacancy" is a kind of...):

space (an empty area (usually bounded in some way between things))

Derivation:

vacant (without an occupant or incumbent)

 Context examples 

Getting a vacancy did not seem to be such a very easy matter, after all.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The charm of an object to occupy the many vacancies of Harriet's mind was not to be talked away.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

Now it becomes: AM HERE A.E SLANE. Or, filling in the obvious vacancies in the name: AM HERE ABE SLANEY.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Suppose that some one turned up in your place who wrote a completely different hand from that in which you had applied for the vacancy, of course the game would have been up.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Lord Nelson has promised me a vacancy for you, and he’ll be as good as his word.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the pleasure of an interview with her the other day,”—with another inclination of his body—Punch again—“that there was a vacancy here.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Silicon vacancies in theory should be electrically neutral, but it turns out other nearby impurities can contribute electrical charges to the defect.

(Key Tech for Quantum Communications Offered by Implanting Diamonds with Flaws, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

He felt a vacancy in him, a need for the hush and quietude of the stream and the cave in the cliff.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

He refused the United States Senate several times, and father says he could become a justice of the Supreme Court any time a vacancy occurs, if he wants to.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

"I ought, but I don't," thought Amy, as her eye went from the bright page to May's discontented face behind the big vases, that could not hide the vacancies her pretty work had once filled.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)