vacancy

Etymology

It is borrowed from Late Latin vacantia,^[2][3][4] which Merriam-Webster calls Medieval Latin,^[5][6] from Latin vacāns (“empty, unoccupied”), the present participle of vacō (“to be empty, be free”),^[2][5][3] which Etymonline traces to Proto-Indo-European *eue- (“to leave, abandon, give out”).^[2] The Oxford English Dictionary allows that it was partly formed from English vacant + -ancy.^[4][7] The Latin word also gave Spanish vacancia, Portuguese vacancia and Italian vacanza.^[4] The older word vacance, from the 1530s, has the same origin.^[2][4]

Earliest recorded meaning

A vacation, a time free from work or business: about 1580, in Spelman's Dialoge, a sense now archaic.^[4][2]

Semantic evolution

The first senses had to do with freedom from work: a vacation (about 1580), a time of leisure (1599), and idleness or inactivity (1615).^[4][8] Shakespeare used it for free time and for an interval of time,^[4] and also in Hamlet for empty space, the sense Johnson gave first in 1755.^[9] The senses of absence then grew: an office falling vacant (1607), an unoccupied space (1652),^[4][8] a vacant post (from the 1690s),^[2][8] the state of being empty (1788),^[8] and an empty church without a minister (1867).^[8] Emptiness of mind, inanity, appears by 1841.^[2][8] In the 20th century it became a technical term in crystallography (1951) and the word for a free room in a hotel (1953).^[8][2]

Timeline

• c. 1580 – a vacation (now archaic).^[4][8]
• 1599 – temporary freedom from business; leisure.^[4]
• 1607 – the falling vacant of an office.^[4][8]
• 1615 – idleness, inactivity.^[4][8]
• 1652 – an unoccupied space, a gap.^[8]
• 1693 – a vacant office or post.^[8][2]
• 1788 – the state of being empty.^[8]
• 1841 – emptiness of mind, inanity.^[8][2]
• 1951 – in crystallography, a missing atom in a lattice.^[8]
• 1953 – a free room in a hotel.^[8][2]

Meanings

Noun

1. The state of being vacant or unoccupied; emptiness.^[10][11]
2. An empty space or gap.^[10][8]
3. An unfilled job or office: The school has a vacancy for a music teacher.^[10][11]
4. A free room in a hotel or guest house: The inn had no vacancies that night.^[11][10]
5. Lack of thought or understanding; inanity: the vacancy of his stare.^[10][11]
6. (physics) A defect in a crystal where an atom, ion or molecule is missing from its place in the lattice.^[10][11]
7. (archaic) A time of leisure; a vacation.^[10][5][4]

Related words

• vacant
• vacate
• vacation
• vacuum
• evacuate
• vain

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
9. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
10. ^ a b c d e f g The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins