VACANT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does vacant mean? 

• VACANT (adjective)
  The adjective VACANT has 2 senses:

1. void of intelligence or thought

2. without an occupant or incumbent

  Familiarity information: VACANT used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VACANT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Void of intelligence or thought

Context example:

a vacant mind

Similar:

empty (holding or containing nothing)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Without an occupant or incumbent

Context example:

the throne is never vacant

Similar:

empty (holding or containing nothing)

Derivation:

vacancy (an empty area or space)

vacancy (being unoccupied)

vacate (leave behind empty; move out of)

vacate (leave (a job, post, or position) voluntarily)

 Context examples 

Two others remained there, and there was a vacant place for the third.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But perhaps if she were to leave the room vacant, we might not be invited.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

You touch me, sir,—you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair—only my hair, nothing else—looked drunk.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

The place on the other side was vacant.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I did not even know, till I understood his design, that the living was vacant; nor had it ever occurred to me that he might have had such a living in his gift.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

After throwing down your paper, which was the action which drew my attention to you, you sat for half a minute with a vacant expression.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“Have I not noted your frequent sighs and vacant eye? Is she fair?”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

But the space on deck where I had left him lying was vacant.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He stretched out his long arm to turn the lamp away from himself and towards the vacant chair upon which a newcomer must sit.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)