Vacancy

How to spell vacancy

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce vacancy

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vacancy mean?

1. nounAn unoccupied position, room, or space that is available to be filled.

Vacancy in a sentence

• The company advertised a vacancy for a senior accountant.

• The hotel had one vacancy left for the weekend.

Where does vacancy come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word descends from the Latin verb vacare, which literally meant 'to be empty' or 'to be free of something'. From that verb Latin formed vacans, the present participle meaning 'being empty', and English shaped the noun 'vacancy' to name the state of being empty or unoccupied; it appears in English from the early 1500s. The same vacare root sits behind a whole family of familiar words: 'vacant', 'vacate', 'vacuum', and even 'vacation', which originally meant a freeing or emptying of one's time. The sense narrowed over the centuries from plain emptiness to the more practical modern meanings of an unfilled job or an unoccupied room. A useful spelling cue is that the ending is -ancy, not -ency: the participle was vacans with an 'a', so the 'a' carries straight through.

How the word is built

• vac- (from vacare: to be empty)
• -ancy (noun-forming suffix denoting a state or condition)