喜樂美語
  1. 1空洞的、言之無物的；（表情）呆滯無神的。是相當重的批評，說對方腦袋裡沒東西。

    Vacuous means empty in the mind — showing no thought, or having no point.

    It works two ways. First, about things people say or make: a vacuous comment, a vacuous speech, vacuous entertainment. The words are there, the sentences are correct, but nothing is inside them. Second, about a person's face or look: a vacuous smile, a vacuous stare. That means the face shows no thinking behind it — the lights are on, nobody is home.

    Be careful: this is a genuine insult, harder than "silly" or "boring". Calling a person vacuous says they have nothing going on inside their head. It is the kind of word a uses about a film, or an angry writer uses about a politician. Between friends, people say "pointless", "empty", "there was nothing to it".

    It is formal and mostly written. And it is not about being stupid exactly — a very clever person can say something vacuous when they are avoiding a question and filling the air with pleasant noise. That gap is where the word does its best work.

組成From Latin vacuus, "empty", plus -ous, the ending that makes an adjective meaning "full of" or "having this quality": danger → dangerous, fame → famous.

同家族的字

  • vacuumsame Latin vacuus — an empty space
  • vacuitythe noun of vacuous, from the same root
  • vacantfrom Latin vacāre, to be empty; note English also says a vacant expression, very close to a vacuous one
  • vacationfrom the same vacāre — time when work is emptied out of your days

原始詞典資料2 筆記錄

以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，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。

vacuousadj/ˈvækju.əs/

  • 1

    Empty; void; lacking meaningful content.

    • vacuous expression
    • vacuous remark
  • 2

    Showing a lack of thought or intelligence; vacant.

    • Near-synonym: fatuous

摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。