Refine this word faster
Emptiness
name, noun
Definitions
Proper Noun
- 1 A Chinese constellation near Aquarius and Equuleus, one of the 28 lunar mansions and part of the Black Turtle.
Noun
- 1 The state or feeling of being empty. countable, uncountable
- 2 the quality of being valueless or futile wordnet
- 3 A void; a nothingness; something lacking existence. countable, uncountable
"Few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is attained."
- 4 an empty area or space wordnet
- 5 A nonexistence; a lack of existence. countable, uncountable
Show 2 more definitions
- 6 having an empty stomach wordnet
- 7 the state of containing nothing wordnet
Etymology
Etymology 1
Inherited from Middle English emptynesse, from Old English ǣmtiġnes. By surface analysis, empty + -ness.
Etymology 2
Calque from Chinese 虛宿／虚宿 (Xūxiù).
See also for "emptiness"
Next best steps
Mini challenge
Unscramble this word: emptiness