vacate

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin vacātus (“emptied, made free”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} the past participle of vacō (“to be empty, be free”);^[2][3][4][7] the OED and the Shorter Oxford name the participial stem vacāt-.^[7][8] The same verb gave vacation, recorded about 1395, long before vacate.^[6][9] Etymonline traces the Latin verb to an extended form of Proto-Indo-European *eue- (“to leave, abandon, give out”).^[2][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

To make void in law, to annul: 1643, in W. Prynne's Soveraigne Power of Parliaments.^[7][6][4] The Oxford Dictionary of English also calls it a legal term at first.^[11]

Semantic evolution

The legal sense came first, and the everyday meaning came about a century and a half later.^[7][2] From 1662 the word could mean to take the force or value out of anything,^[7] as in Dryden's "He vacates my revenge", and Johnson (1755) entered "to defeat; to put an end to" for this.^[12][4] Johnson put "to annul" first, with the emptying of an office or possession second.^[12] The sense of emptying a post appears about 1697, and leaving a place in 1791, in A. Radcliffe's Romance of the Forest;^[7][2] Hoad likewise dates "withdraw from" to the 18th century.^[13] Giving up an office is first recorded in Thackeray's Pendennis (1850).^[7] American English added "to take a holiday" in 1836,^[7] and "to leave or go away" is recorded from 1872.^[7] Black's Law Dictionary still lists the old legal sense first.^[14]

Timeline

• 1643 – to make void in law; to annul.^[7][6][4]
• 1662 – to deprive of force or value (now obsolete or rare).^[7]
• c. 1697 – to make a post vacant.^[7]
• 1769 – to remove or withdraw a record.^[7]
• 1791 – to leave a place or seat.^[7][2]
• 1812 – intransitive, to give up an office.^[7]
• 1836 – American, to take a holiday.^[7]
• 1850 – to give up an office or position.^[7]
• 1854 – intransitive, to give up a house, in Thoreau's Walden.^[7]
• 1872 – to leave or go away.^[7]

Meanings

Verb

1. To leave a place or give up living in it: Guests must vacate their cabins by ten.^{[10][15][9][7]}
2. To give up an office or position: She vacated her seat on the council.^{[10][15][5][7]}
3. (law) To cancel or annul something, especially a judgment: The appeals court vacated the conviction.^{[10][9][14][7]}
4. To leave a lodging, place or post, without an object.^[10][7]
5. (US) To take a vacation.^[7]
6. (obsolete or rare) To deprive of force or effect.^[7][8][4]

Word family

• vacatable
• revacate
• unvacated

Related words

• vacant
• vacation
• evacuate
• vacuum
• vacuous

Usage notes

Merriam-Webster's Unabridged and Dictionary.com list a chiefly British pronunciation with a weakened first vowel, /vəˈkeɪt/.^[4][5]

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f 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 Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
11. ^ Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
14. ^ a b Garner, Bryan A., ed. (2004), Black's Law Dictionary, 8th ed., St. Paul, Minn.: Thomson West
15. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins