Etymologically
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vacancy

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Pronunciation

  • /ˈveɪkənsi/[1]

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]

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