vacío

Forms

vacío (feminine vacía, masculine plural vacíos, feminine plural vacías)^[1] Old Spanish wrote the word with ⟨z⟩, vazio, uazio or bazio, for a voiced sound that Nebrija still had and that survives in Cáceres and in Judeo-Spanish.^[2][3] In the Cantar de mio Cid and the Poema de Fernán González the word was stressed vázio, under the influence of the present tense of vaciar.^[2]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish vazio, inherited from Latin vacīvus (“empty, unoccupied”).^[2][4][5][1] The Latin adjective was an old and rare variant of vacuus (“empty”), which it replaced in Vulgar Latin.^[4][6] It is formed from vacō (“to be empty, be free”) with the suffix -īvus, and Plautus and Terence usually wrote it vocīvus.^[1][7][8]

The same Latin word is Portuguese vazio, Galician vacío and Asturian vacíu, and Aragonese and Navarrese dialects have vacivo.^[9][1][10] Elsewhere it survives mostly as a word for livestock: Catalan baciu names sheep kept for fattening rather than breeding, and dialects of Occitan, French and northern Italy use it for ewes or cows that are not with young.^[11][12] Corominas notes the sense “not pregnant” in an Aragonese inventory of 1379 and explains the Catalan feminine baciva from a form *vacciva, crossed with vacca (“cow”).^[2]

The classical adjective gave vago (“empty”), still heard in the phrase en vago, and the learned vacuo, recorded about 1449.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Corominas dates the word to the Cantar de mio Cid, of about 1140, where it is spelt with ⟨z⟩.^[2][4] In the Lapidario of Alfonso X (1250–1279) it describes a stone that is hollow inside: et quando la quebrantan fallan la uazia de dentro “and when they break it they find it empty inside”.^[13]

Semantic evolution

In 1611 Covarrubias gave both the noun, “the unoccupied place”, and the sense “vain, foolish and presumptuous”, with the saying una vana y dos vacías for empty talkers.^[14] The Academy's dictionary of 1817 listed the senses that the word still has: empty of any body, of a female animal without young, vain, idle, and of a cart, a house or a town without its load or its people.^[15]

The noun took on technical senses: the flank between the ribs and the hip, a step of Spanish dance, and in physics a space without matter.^[5][16] It also names a lack that is felt, of a thing or a person.^[5] In Central America and the Dominican Republic a food eaten vacío is eaten without tortilla or side dish, and in Costa Rica coffee is drunk vacío, on its own.^[17]

Timeline

• c. 1140 – first record, in the Cantar de mio Cid.^[4][2]
• 1250–1279 – the Lapidario of Alfonso X uses uazia of a hollow stone.^[13]
• 1379 – an Aragonese inventory uses vacía of a ewe that is not pregnant.^[2]
• 1516 – first record from the Americas, in Puerto Rico: cajas vacías grandes “large empty boxes”.^[18]
• 1611 – Covarrubias records the noun and the sense “vain, presumptuous”.^[14]
• 1817 – the Academy lists the senses for animals, carts, houses and towns.^[15]

Meanings

Adjective

1. empty: lacking physical or mental content: La botella ya estaba vacía.^[5][1]
2. Of a female farm animal: not pregnant.^[5]
3. Of a place: with fewer people than it can hold.^[5]
4. hollow, or lacking the solidity it should have.^[5]
5. vain, conceited.^[5]
6. (rare) Fruitless, come to nothing.^[5]
7. (rare) idle, without the occupation one could or should have.^[5]
8. (Central America, Dominican Republic) Of food: eaten without tortilla or a side dish.^[17]

Noun

1. A cavity or hollow in something.^[5]
2. The flank: the hollow between the false ribs and the hip.^[5][16]
3. An abyss or a great drop.^[5]
4. A movement of Spanish dance in which one foot is raised sharply and then let fall.^[5]
5. A void: the lack of something or someone that is missed: Su muerte dejó un gran vacío en la familia.^[5]
6. (physics) A vacuum, a space without matter.^[5][16][1]
7. (obsolete) A vacancy, a post not yet filled.^[5]

Word family

• vaciedad
• vaciar

Related words

• vacuo
• vacante
• vagar
• Latin vacīvus
• Portuguese vazio

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 5, 728
3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock
4. ^ a b c d Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. vacío
5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. vacío
6. ^ Bénaben, Michel (2000), Dictionnaire étymologique de l'espagnol, Paris: Ellipses
7. ^ Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
8. ^ Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
9. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954)
10. ^ Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. 3471
11. ^ Alcover, Antoni M.; Moll, Francesc de B. (1930–1962), Diccionari català-valencià-balear, 10 vols., Palma de Mallorca: Moll
12. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter
13. ^ a b Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024)
14. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1368
15. ^ a b Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 874
16. ^ a b c Real Academia Nacional de Medicina (2011), Diccionario de términos médicos, Madrid: Editorial Médica Panamericana; online at https://dtme.ranm.es
17. ^ a b Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer
18. ^ Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies