vacancy

From vac(ant) +‎ -ancy.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈveɪkənsi/

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vacancy (countable and uncountable, plural vacancies)

1. An unoccupied position or job.
   • 1965, Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution:

     Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

2. An available room in a hotel; guest house, etc.
3. Empty space.
   • 1993, James Michie, trans. Ovid, The Art of Love, Book II:

     Sky was set above earth, land ringed with sea, / Chaos retired to its own vacancy [...].

4. A blank mind, unoccupied with thought.
   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter I, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 2:

     ...—who has not looked back to the past with that passion of hopelessness, which deems that life can never more be what it has been,—with a consciousness that the dearer emotions are exhausted, while in their place have arisen but vacancy and weariness?

5. Lack of intelligence or understanding.
6. (physics) A defect in a crystal caused by the absence of an atom in a lattice

• vacant (adjective)
• vacate (verb)