What's the difference between vacant and vacuous?

Vacant


Definition:

  • (a.) Deprived of contents; not filled; empty; as, a vacant room.
  • (a.) Unengaged with business or care; unemployed; unoccupied; disengaged; free; as, vacant hours.
  • (a.) Not filled or occupied by an incumbent, possessor, or officer; as, a vacant throne; a vacant parish.
  • (a.) Empty of thought; thoughtless; not occupied with study or reflection; as, a vacant mind.
  • (a.) Abandoned; having no heir, possessor, claimant, or occupier; as, a vacant estate.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) If women psychiatrists are to fill some of the positions in Departments of Psychiatry, which will fall vacant over the next decade, much more attention must be paid to eliminating or diminishing the multiple obstacles for women who chose a career in academic psychiatry.
  • (2) Deafferentation of certain brain regions in adult animals results in (1) the disappearance of degenerating axon terminals and (2) in the temporary persistence of vacant postsynaptic sites.
  • (3) The data suggests that putrescine may reduce net formation of vacant 70 S ribosomes.
  • (4) Hiddleston, who played spy Jonathan Pine in the Night Manager, has played down speculation that he would take on the role, recently telling the BBC’s Graham Norton Show: “The position isn’t vacant as far as I’m aware.
  • (5) The station looks unloved and there are many vacant plots of land.
  • (6) Simulated territorial intrusion promoted increased plasma levels of both T and 11KT while access to vacant territories without neighboring territorial males did not.
  • (7) Abbott said Simpkins and Randall were “perfectly entitled” to call for the two leadership positions to be declared vacant, but they were “asking the party room to vote out the people that the electorate voted in in September 2013”.
  • (8) Richard Rogers has called for a "severe" new tax on empty homes and warned that prime areas of London are emptying because of wealthy buyers leaving homes vacant.
  • (9) An online communication facility to the central register enables searches for and reporting of vacant treatment capacity.
  • (10) This pathological response can be explained by lacrimotor fibres branching into vacant sympathetic sudomotor pathways.
  • (11) Skin biopsies of non-atopic healthy controls or clinically uninvolved skin in mycosis fungoides had neither any IgE+ cells nor any vacant binding sites.
  • (12) They almost found themselves three goals down as Schürrle took up the space once again left vacant by Marcelo, but, after taking a touch, he fired over.
  • (13) Labour strategists are understood to be planning to stage an early byelection in a vacant Greater Manchester seat in an attempt to minimise the potential of an embarrassing threat from the UK Independence party.
  • (14) It is concluded that the extent of reactive reflex changes may be related to both the number of vacant synaptic sites and the degree of functional synergism between the eliminated and remaining monosynaptic pathways.
  • (15) Four weeks later, it was found in the specimens that the growth of neurofibers sprung out from the end of the proximal stump directed towards the distal nerve stump rather than towards the tendon end or the vacant limb of the tube.
  • (16) Vacant buildings are being pressed into service, and the usual high standards set by the immigration service are being waived.
  • (17) I would like to see a law passed where there is an obligation on owners of properties left vacant for a long time to allow homeless people to temporarily move in.
  • (18) The West Ham board are now considering their options, with interest registered with a number of candidates for the vacant managerial position.
  • (19) NHS England expresses the same concern in the leaked draft report: “The commitment to seven-day GP access is … dependent on the commitment to an additional 5,000 GPs working in general practice, which is a challenging target, both in terms of recruitment and retaining the existing workforce.” Porter said the document “echoes the BMA’s concerns around the government’s recruitment target for GPs, at a time when one in three GPs are considering retiring in the next five years and hundreds of GP trainee posts were left vacant this year.
  • (20) A 22-year-old named Guy Roux sent off an application for the vacant head coach's job at l'Association de la Jeunesse Auxerroise.

Vacuous


Definition:

  • (a.) Empty; unfilled; void; vacant.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A different pattern was observed in the open cage test, where both neuroleptic groups showed significant increases in vacuous OMs during drug administration which rapidly became attenuated upon drug withdrawal.
  • (2) Vacuous chewing movements in rats may be an animal analogue of the human motor disorder, tardive dyskinesia.
  • (3) Buckman will also accuse the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, of responding to growing problems in the NHS with "cheap soundbites and vacuous political point scoring", such as wrongly blaming GPs and out-of-hours services for rising attendances at A&E units.
  • (4) This criticism can be extended of course to other forms of online communities, such as Facebook, where contact-less friendships are reduced to pokes, LOLs, and vacuous innuendos.
  • (5) Previous studies have shown that the emergence of spontaneous dyskinetic behaviors, such as vacuous chewing movements, following several months of neuroleptic treatment in the rat, is correlated with depletion of nigral GABA.
  • (6) Vacuous jaw movements that resemble chewing were produced by dopamine depletion in the ventrolateral striatum, but not the anteroventromedial or dorsolateral striatum.
  • (7) And one might nod as one hears banal and vacuous philosophical themes such as "change begins with you" or "every little thing helps".
  • (8) A dose-related increase in vacuous chewing was induced by injections of pilocarpine in the ventrolateral but not the ventromedial striatum.
  • (9) The announcement was dismissed as window dressing by the shadow home office minister Lady Smith, and as "vacuous and cynical posturing" by Steven Woolfe, a Ukip immigration spokesman.
  • (10) Hedonistic, vacuous, self-important and delusional.
  • (11) The Guardian's Charlie Brooker created the character of Nathan Barley , a vacuous media playboy, back in 1999, around the same time the east London fanzine The Shoreditch Twat began published its first edition.
  • (12) The crest of mitochondria was blur, coalescent and vacuous.
  • (13) I suspect a lot of people will write Kim Kardashian’s Hollywood off as a vacuous game about a vacuous person, using a cynical business model that preys on stupid players who wouldn’t know a “proper game” if it snogged them on the pillion.
  • (14) In contrast, bilateral microinfusions of muscimol into the nigrocollicular target region, in the deep layers of superior colliculus, blocked elicitation of gnawing by intranigral muscimol, but completely spared elicitation of vacuous chewing movements by intranigral isoniazid.
  • (15) In an era when art has increasingly become a vacuous wealth statement or part of an investment portfolio, Banksy continues to be seen by many as a pomposity-pricking man of the people.
  • (16) The influence of stressful experiences on the development of vacuous chewing movements (VCM) was investigated in non-medicated rats.
  • (17) Intranigral infusion of GABA agonists causes stereotyped licking and gnawing in rats, while intranigral GABA antagonists produce vacuous chewing movements.
  • (18) The ECC report: "DECC's stated objectives for reforming the electricity market are uncontentious but vacuous.
  • (19) Almost as vacuous as Clegg's contribution to the leadership debates, you might think.
  • (20) The development of vacuous chewing movements (VCMs), and changes in glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) and choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) activities in extrapyramidal nuclei were examined in rats treated chronically with neuroleptics.