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Vacuum

//ˈvæ.kjuːm// noun, verb, slang

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A region of space that contains no matter.

    "The Wards are open-topped, with skyscrapers rising from the superstructure. Towers are sealed against vacuum, as the breathable atmosphere envelope is only maintained to a height of about seven meters. The atmosphere is contained by the centrifugal force of rotation and a "membrane" of dense, colorless sulphur hexafluoride gas, held in place by carefully managed mass effect fields."

  2. 2
    an electrical home appliance that cleans by suction wordnet
  3. 3
    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.

    "a vacuum of 26 inches of mercury, or 13 pounds per square inch"

  4. 4
    a region that is devoid of matter wordnet
  5. 5
    Ellipsis of vacuum cleaner. abbreviation, alt-of, colloquial, ellipsis
Show 7 more definitions
  1. 6
    an empty area or space wordnet
  2. 7
    A spacetime having tensors of zero magnitude.
  3. 8
    the absence of matter wordnet
  4. 9
    A ground state of a quantum field or of local spacetime, or more abstractly the lowest-energy state of a system.
  5. 10
    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.
  6. 11
    An emptiness in life created by a loss of a person who was close, or of an occupation.

    "Henrietta soon found a terrible vacuum left, by the letters in which she used to pour forth every feeling and thought to her uncle."

  7. 12
    An exercise in which one draws their abdomen towards the spine.

    "Abs show up in a most-muscular shot, a vacuum shot, the hands-behind-head compulsory ab shot, twisting poses, and so on."

Verb
  1. 1
    To clean (something) with a vacuum cleaner. transitive

    "“Who in the world cleans an attic? That's like vacuuming a shed.”"

  2. 2
    clean with a vacuum cleaner wordnet
  3. 3
    To use a vacuum cleaner. intransitive
  4. 4
    To optimise a database or database table by physically removing deleted tuples. transitive

    "But the advantage of an auto-vacuumed database is that when B-tree pages are no longer needed, they are moved to the end of the database file and then the database file is truncated, thus returning the unused pages back to the filesystem."

Etymology

Etymology 1

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.

Etymology 2

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.

See also for "vacuum"

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