| 释义 |
vacuity|væˈkjuːɪtɪ|
Also 6 vacuytee, 6–7 vacuitie, 7 vacuety.
[ad. L. vacuitās empty space, vacancy, freedom, etc., f. vacuus: see vacuum n. So F. vacuité (1314), It. vacuità, Sp. vacuidad, Pg. vacuidade.]
I.
1. Absolute emptiness of space; complete absence of matter.
1546Langley tr. Pol. Verg. de Invent. i. ii. 4 b, Epicurus..putteth two Causes Atomos or Motes and Vacuitie or emptinesse. 1597Middleton Wisd. Solomon i. 2 For him..The Horizons and hemespheres obay, And windes the fillers of vacuitie. c1626Donne Serm. Wks. 1839 IV. 20 Water will clamber up hills and Air will sink down into Vaults rather than admit Vacuity. 1644Digby Nat. Bodies iii. (1658) 24 Aristotle..hath demonstrated that there can be no motion in vacuity. a1700Ken Hymnotheo Poet. Wks. 1721 III. 294 Some Dotards dream'd..That Atoms..Should rise from nothing in Vacuity. 1728Chambers Cycl. s.v. Vacuum, But mere Space, or Vacuity, is suppos'd to be extended; therefore it is material. 1829Chapters Phys. Sci. 231 A large portion of interspersed vacuity is sufficient for all purposes. 186.G. Outram Law Lyrics, The Annuity viii, She beats the taeds that live in stanes An' fatten in vacuity.
b. With a, no, etc. (Passing into 8.)
1603Holland Plutarch's Mor. 1021 There is no voidnesse or vacuity in nature. 1660R. Coke Power & Subj. 54 So the laws of nature will admit of many things contrary to nature, rather then endure a vacuity. 1704Ray Creation i. 83 Nature's abhorrence of a Vacuity.
transf.a1631Donne Select. (1840) 244 In the first vacuity, when thou wast nothing he sought thee so early as in Adam. 1655Fuller Hist. Cambr. (1840) 237 To prevent a vacuity, (the detestation of nature,) a new plantation was soon substituted in their room.
2. Emptiness consisting in the absence of solid or liquid matter.
1579G. Baker Guydo's Quest. 12 Some [bones] are embossed for to enter, and other haue vacuity that receiueth. 1651Biggs New Disp. 156 The vacuity of the depleted veins doth attract the bloud beneath. 1822Good Study Med. II. 10 This vacuity of the arteries upon death, was one of the objections urged very forcibly by the ancients against the circulation of the blood.
b. Absence of any of the visible objects usually occupying certain spaces; complete emptiness in respect of things or persons.
1660F. Brooke tr. Le Blanc's Trav. 268 Leading him to a dark deep well,..but terrified with the vacuity and darknesse, he retired. 1759Johnson Rasselas xv, The princess and her maid,..seeing nothing to bound their prospect, considered themselves as in danger of being lost in a dreary vacuity. 1775― in Boswell (1816) II. 424 Madam, I do not like to come down to vacuity. 1818Scott Rob Roy xx, Such sunbeams as forced their way through the narrow Gothic lattices..and..lost themselves in the vacuity of the vaults behind. 1842H. Rogers Introd. Burke's Wks. 67 The grim spectres..who stalk from desolation to desolation, through the dreary vacuity..of chill and comfortless chambers. 1891T. Hardy Tess (1900) 139/1 As he gazed, a moving spot intruded on the white vacuity of its perspective.
c. The fact of being unfilled or unoccupied.
1664Evelyn Sylva 41 But 'tis cheaper to supply the vacuity of such accidental decays by a new plantation. 1844Mrs. Browning Drama of Exile 168 To fill the vacant thrones of me and mine, Which affront Heaven with their vacuity.
3. The quality or fact of being empty, in various fig. senses.
1603Florio Montaigne ii. xii. (1632) 247 To make them feele the emptiness, vacuity, and no worth of man. 1640Bp. Reynolds Passions xvi. 169 The most generall [cause of desire]..is a Vacuity, Indigence, and selfe-insufficiency of the Soule. 1690C. Nesse Hist. Myst. O. & N.T. I. 289 They have the most light to discover to themselves their own vacuity and nothingness. 1806A. Knox Rem. I. 21 It would follow that..the great central appetite of intellectual man..was abandoned to the self-torture of irremediable vacuity. 1850Carlyle Latter-d. Pamph. vi. (1872) 202 Here is an abyss of vacuity in our much-admired opulence. 1885Pater Marius II. 144 It was an experience which came in the midst of a deep sense of vacuity in things.
b. Emptiness (in fig. senses) as a condition or state having a kind of real existence.
a1711Ken Christophil Poet. Wks. 1721 I. 429 Thou all-sufficient art, and I Am nothing but vacuity. 1751Johnson Rambler No. 141 ⁋9 Think on the misery of him who is condemned to cultivate barrenness and ransack vacuity. 1776― Let. to Mrs. Thrale 30 Mar., I know that a whole system of hopes, and designs, and expectations, is swept away at once, and nothing left but bottomless vacuity. 1819J. H. Wiffen Aonian Hours (1820) 25 The drear Vacuity of sorrow on thee lay. 1840Carlyle Heroes vi. (1904) 245 Having once parted with Reality, he tumbles helpless in Vacuity. 1888P. Fitzgerald Fatal Zero iv, In my lonely blue chamber, there is a sort of vacuity for thought, the world is shut out.
4. Complete absence of ideas; vacancy of mind or thought.
1594Hooker Eccl. Pol. i. vi. §1 Men..are at the first without vnderstanding or knowledge at all. Neuerthelesse from this vtter vacuitie they grow by degrees. 1661K. W. Conf. Charac., Meere Polititian (1860) 27 Which will availe him little; but to be an indicium of his own vacuity and emptiness of all sollidity. 1707Floyer Physic. Pulse-Watch 363 The Pulse,..if it be weak,..indicates Vacuity and Fear. 1773H. More Search after Happ. ii, Though more to folly than to guilt inclined, A drear vacuity possess'd my mind. 1818S. E. Ferrier Marriage xv, Imputing to fatigue of body, what in fact was the consequence of mental vacuity, he proposed returning home. 1854Marion Harland Alone xvii, She heard and saw all that passed; but in place of heart and sense, was a dead vacuity. 1885Clodd Myths & Dr. i. i. 9 We cannot so far lull our faculty of thought as to realise the mental vacuity of the savage.
b. Const. of (eye, mind, thought).
1760Sterne Tr. Shandy iii. i, That perplexed vacuity of eye which puzzled souls generally stare with. 1784Cowper Task iv. 297 'Tis thus the understanding takes repose In indolent vacuity of thought. 1829Cobbett Adv. Young Man v. 247 A great fondness for music is a mark of..great vacuity of mind. 1863Cowden Clarke Shaks. Char. xx. 507 He frequents low dissolute haunts from no graver cause than idleness and vacuity of mind. 1879Farrar St. Paul I. 183 We may be sure that the vacuity of thought in which most men live was for Saul a thing impossible.
5. Complete absence or lack of something.
1601Sir W. Cornwallis Ess. ii. xlv. (1631) 251 Which vacuitie of vertue at that time will breede more terrour to him then darknesse to children. 1642D. Rogers Naaman 172 Christ is a sufficient store to a poore soule in the vacuity of other things. 1698J. Cockburn Bourignianism Detected i. 7 She..was in an admirable vacuity of all Desire of knowing. 1782F. Burney Cecilia iv. vi, When he is quite tired of his existence, from a total vacuity of ideas, he must affect a look of absence. 1792A. Young Trav. France 118 There is as much character in his air and manner as there is vacuity of it in the countenance of..St. Etienne. 1822Good Study Med. III. 46 To contemplate the body and mind..at birth..as consisting equally of a blank or vacuity of impressions.
†6. Complete freedom or exemption from something. Obs.
a1619M. Fotherby Atheom. i. xii. §1 The soule cannot haue in it, any true ioy,..vnlesse the same be founded, both in security, and in confidence, and in tranquillity. All which do imply a vacuity from feare. 1648Sanderson Serm. (1681) II. 246 By the Evenness of the Mind and the Vacuity from those secret lashes..that haunt a guilty Conscience. a1665J. Goodwin Filled w. the Spirit (1867) 429 A well-grounded vacuity or freedom from all troublesome, distracting, and tormenting fears and cares.
7.
†a. Leisure for some pursuit. Obs.—1
1607Scholast. Disc. agst. Antichrist i. iii. 137 From this preposterousnesse of the Crosse setting the sense before the spirite, come wee to his Vacuitie for his inwarde Devotion.
b. Lack of occupation; idleness.
1817Jas. Mill Brit. India I. ii. ix. 389 A whole race of men..whom the pain of vacuity forced upon some application of mind. 1875A. R. Hope My Schoolboy F. 72 The hours of thoughtful vacuity I had spent.
II.
8. A hollow or enclosed space empty of matter; esp. a small internal cavity or interstice of this kind in a solid body.
1541R. Copland Guydon's Quest. Chirurg. D ij, Some [bones] are enbossed for to entre, and other haue vacuytees that receyueth. 1607Topsell Four-f. Beasts 330 That so those places being emptied..the vacuety may be replenished with better blood. 1659Hammond On Ps. lxv. 10 The earth..sinks down and fills up the vacuities. 1677Grew Anat. Pl. (1682) 300 There are Vacuities in Water. That is to say, that all the parts of Water are not contiguous. 1731Medley Kolben's Cape G. Hope II. 95 Those pieces become as hard as flints, and altogether as smooth and solid; not the least vacuity or interstice being to be seen. 1770Phil. Trans. LX. 422 Every particle of light that issues from the sun, must leave a spherical vacuity of one millionth of one millionth of an inch diameter. 1800Ibid. XC. 235 A wad was placed over the powder, dry sand superadded, to fill all vacuities. 1840Jrnl. Engl. Agric. Soc. I. iii. 355 Water in descending seeks the nearest vacuity. 1872Dana Corals i. 38 The polyp has..no blood-vessels but the vacuities among the tissues.
b. A cosmic space empty of matter.
1643Sir T. Browne Relig. Med. i. §49 When this sensible world shall be destroyed, all shall then be here as it is now there, an Empyreall Heaven, a quasi vacuitie. 1667Milton P.L. ii. 932 That seat soon failing, [he] meets A vast vacuitie. 1685Boyle Enq. Notion Nat. 75 Whilst their numberless Atoms wildly rov'd in their infinite Vacuity. 1795W. Blake Bk. Los iv, The Deep fled away On all sides, and left an unform'd Dark Vacuity.
9. An empty space left or contrived in something, esp. in some composite work or structure.
1624Wotton Archit. (1672) 26 To place the Columnes precisely one over another, that so the solid may answer to the solid, and the vacuities to the vacuities. 1655Fuller Hist. Waltham Abbey (1840) 257 The great pillars thereof are wreathed with indentings; which vacuities, if formerly filled up with brass,..added much to the beauty of the building. 1726Leoni Alberti's Archit. I. 55/2 The vacuities which are left between the back..of the Arch, and the upright of the Wall. 1775Johnson West. Isl. Wks. X. 509 Round which there are narrow cavities or recesses formed by small vacuities or by a double wall. 1823P. Nicholson Pract. Build. 425 Rooms are the interior vacuities or habitable parts of a building. 1845Florist's Jrnl. 67 An ingeniously contrived trap for earwigs,..leaving a vacuity for the reception of the insects. 1870Rolleston Anim. Life 8 By a vacuity in the skull walls for the blood to pass out from the lateral sinus.
b. An open space, gap, or interval left between or among things. rare.
1658Sir T. Browne Gard. Cyrus ii. ⁋12 Whereby the Elephants passing the vacuities of the Hastati, might have run upon them. 1757Burke Abridgm. Eng. Hist. i. iv, The Scots and Picts..rushed with redoubled violence into this vacuity. 1863Hawthorne Our Old Home (1879) 152 The market-place..of the town is a rather spacious and irregularly shaped vacuity.
c. An empty space due to the disappearance or absence of some special thing.
1822–7Good Study Med. (1829) III. 227 He has also seen others..reproduce a smaller or larger number of teeth to supply vacuities progressively produced in earlier life. 1849M. Somerville Connex. Phys. Sci. xxxvii. 415 Those dark vacuities called ‘coal sacks’ by the ancient navigators, which are so numerous between α Centauri and α Antaris. 1867–77G. F. Chambers Astron. vi. iv. 519 The central vacuity is not quite dark.
10. An emptiness, an empty space, a blank, in various fig. uses.
a1631Donne Select. (1840) 5 A filling of all former vacuities, a supplying of all emptinesses in our souls. 1651Baxter Inf. Bapt. 325 In this age, when men may say any thing if they have but Rhetorick to fill up the Vacuities. 1682W. Owtram Serm. 342 Our Saviour..filled up the vacuities that Moses had left in moral duties. 1732Pope Ess. Man ii. 286 Each want of happiness by hope supply'd, And each vacuity of sense by pride. 1776Adam Smith W.N. ii. ii. (1869) 303 Whatever vacuities this excessive circulation occasioned in the necessary coin of the kingdom. 1841Emerson Ess. Ser. i. x, But yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much. 1850Kingsley A. Locke i, Oh those Sabbaths..when there was nothing to fill up the long vacuity but books of which I did not understand a word.
11. An empty or inane thing.
1648J. Beaumont Psyche xi. lxviii, That with those huge ador'd Vacuities, Which puff the World up with their frothy flood, Ev'n massy Gold must counted be. 1665Manley Grotius' Low C. Wars 511 The Prince, by the Concessions of these Honorary Vacuities, redeeming the War from delay. 1843Carlyle Past & Pr. i. iv, Thou for one wilt not again vote for any quack, do honour to any edge-gilt vacuity in man's shape. |