noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   A heavy-duty industrial vacuum cleaner designed to handle debris from a worksite or mechanical shop.
2. 2
   A wet-dry vacuum cleaner that can vacuum up wet material, liquids, and conventional dry mass, dust, dirt, sand, etc. and may be used as a makeshift pump in emergencies.

Etymology

Genericization of the trademark Shop-Vac, from shop + vac, from workshop and vacuum cleaner.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.