vacuum
Meanings
noun
- A region of space that contains no matter.
- The condition of rarefaction, or reduction of pressure below that of the atmosphere, in a vessel, such as the condenser of a steam engine, which is nearly exhausted of air or steam, etc.
- Ellipsis of vacuum cleaner.
- A spacetime having tensors of zero magnitude.
- A ground state of a quantum field or of local spacetime, or more abstractly the lowest-energy state of a system.
- A description of spacetime resulting from a particular compactification of spatial dimensions.
- An emptiness in life created by a loss of a person who was close, or of an occupation.
- An exercise in which one draws their abdomen towards the spine.
verb
- To clean (something) with a vacuum cleaner.
- To use a vacuum cleaner.
- To optimise a database or database table by physically removing deleted tuples.
Pronunciation
Word forms
Etymology
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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