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vacuous: msg#00006

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Subject: vacuous

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The Word of the Day for September 7 is:

vacuous \VAK-yuh-wus\ adjective
1 : emptied of or lacking content
*2 : marked by lack of ideas or intelligence : stupid, inane
3 : devoid of serious occupation : idle

Example sentence:
Alyssa was told that her blind date was well-read and
articulate, so she was disappointed to discover that he was a
vacuous bore.

Did you know?
As you might have guessed, "vacuous" shares the same root
as "vacuum" -- the Latin adjective "vacuus," meaning "empty."
This root also gave us the noun "vacuity" (the oldest meaning of
which is "an empty space") as well as the verb "evacuate"
(originally "to remove the contents of; empty"). Its
predecessor, the verb "vacare," is also an ancestor of the
words "vacation" and "vacancy" as well as "void." All of these
words suggest an emptiness of space, or else a fleeing of people
or things from one place to another. "Vacuous" first appeared in
English in the middle of the 17th century, literally describing
something that was empty, but then acquired its figurative
usage, describing one who is lacking any substance of the mind,
in the mid-1800s.

*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.






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