Evacuation

How to spell evacuation

10 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce evacuation

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does evacuation mean?

1. nounThe act of moving people away from a dangerous place to somewhere safer.
2. nounThe act of emptying something of its contents, as of air, fluid, or material.

Evacuation in a sentence

• The fire alarm triggered an immediate evacuation of the office building.

• The pump ensures the complete evacuation of air from the sealed chamber.

• Residents near the flooded river were ordered to begin their evacuation at dawn.

• The surgeon described the careful evacuation of fluid from the wound.

Where does evacuation come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin verb evacuare, meaning 'to empty out', which was formed from the prefix ex- 'out' and the adjective vacuus 'empty' (the same root that gives us 'vacuum' and 'vacant'). In late Latin and medieval medicine, evacuare often referred to emptying the body of fluids or contents, and that physiological sense entered English first. The noun 'evacuation' arrived in the 1400s through French and bookish Latin, originally describing this medical discharging. Over time the meaning broadened to the act of clearing people or things out of a place, and during the wartime upheavals of the twentieth century it became firmly attached to moving populations away from danger. The spelling keeps the Latin vacu- intact, so remembering its cousin 'vacuum' helps fix the awkward c-u-a stretch in the middle.

How the word is built

• e- (out, from ex-)
• vacu (empty)
• -ation (noun of action)