Vacuum

How to spell vacuum

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce vacuum

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does vacuum mean?

1. nounA space entirely empty of matter, or a household appliance that cleans by suction.
2. verbTo clean a surface using a suction appliance.

Vacuum in a sentence

• noun

  The experiment required a near perfect vacuum inside the sealed chamber.

• verb

  Please vacuum the carpet before the guests arrive.

• noun

  The vacuum cleaner is broken.

• verb

  She likes to vacuum the stairs every weekend.

• noun

  The vacuum in the cupboard needs replacing.

Where does vacuum come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin vacuum, the neuter form of the adjective vacuus, meaning 'empty' or 'unoccupied', which itself derived from the verb vacare, 'to be empty' or 'to be free of'. Latin scholars used vacuum to name an empty space containing no matter, and English adopted it in this scientific sense during the early 1600s as natural philosophers began debating whether truly empty space could exist. The double 'u' that trips up so many writers is a direct fossil of the Latin ending: the 'vacu' root meets the '-um' suffix, leaving two vowels side by side, an unusual pattern in English. The same vacare root sits behind familiar relatives such as 'vacant', 'vacate', and 'evacuate', all carrying the idea of emptiness or clearing out. The household meaning, the suction cleaner, is a much later shortening of 'vacuum cleaner', a twentieth-century device named because it works by creating a partial vacuum.

How the word is built

• vacu- (from Latin vacuus: empty)
• -um (Latin neuter noun suffix)