vacuum

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A space that contains no matter or air.

   Sound cannot travel through a vacuum.

2. 2
   noun

   An electric machine that cleans floors by suction.

   He ran the vacuum over the living-room carpet.

3. 3
   verb

   To clean something using a vacuum cleaner.

   Could you vacuum the carpets before the guests arrive?

4. 4
   noun

   An empty feeling left by the loss of someone or something important.

   Her retirement left a vacuum at the heart of the team.

Borrowed from New Latin vacuum (“vacuum”), a subsense of Classical Latin vacuum (“empty space”), a substantivised form of vacuus (“empty”); related to vacāre (“to be empty”). The exercise sense comes from analogy to the sucking action of a vacuum cleaner.

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