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Vacuity is the noun for being vacuous — emptiness of thought. If a speech has nothing real inside it, if a person says only pretty nothing-words, if a TV show has no idea in it at all, you can call that vacuity. It is a strong, cold, formal word, and it is an insult. A writer will speak of "the vacuity of modern political talk" or "the sheer vacuity of the argument". You are not saying the thing is wrong; you are saying there is nothing there to be right or wrong about. Usually uncountable: the vacuity of his remarks. You will meet it mostly in reviews, essays, and serious criticism. Almost nobody uses it in speech; in conversation people say "it was empty", "there was nothing in it", "total fluff". Though actually — it also has an older, plainer meaning of "an empty space", and doctors and scientists once used it that way. Today that sense is rare, and "vacuum" or "empty space" has taken over. If you meet vacuity in a modern text, it is almost certainly about mind, not about space.
(言論、思想)空洞、言之無物;空虛。用來批評內容沒有實質、講了等於沒講。
組成From Latin vacuitās, "empty space", built on vacuus "empty". In English you can see it as vacu- (empty) + -ity, the ending that makes a noun for a quality: pure → purity, able → ability, vacuous → vacuity.
原始詞典資料4 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,原文照列,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
vacuitynoun/væˈkjuːɪtɪ/
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Emptiness.
- The meanes I use to suppresse this frenzy, and which seemeth the fittest for my purpose, is to crush, and trample this humane pride and fiercenesse under foot, to make them feele the emptinesse, vacuitie, and no worth of man[…].
- to find so sensible a breach or vacuity in the course of the passions, by means of this breach in the connexion of ideas[…].
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Physical emptiness, an absence of matter.
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Idleness; listlessness.
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An empty or inane remark or thing.
資料來源:英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary(CC BY-SA 4.0)。 原文照列,未經改寫。