Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state of being empty; the state of containing nothing, or nothing but air: as, the emptiness of a vessel.
  • noun Lack of food in the stomach; a state of fasting.
  • noun Void space; a vacuum.
  • noun Want of solidity or substance.
  • noun Unsatisfactoriness; insufficiency to satisfy the mind or heart; worthlessness.
  • noun Want of understanding or knowledge; vacuity of mind; inanity.
  • noun Synonyms Vanity, hollowness, nothingness.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The state of being empty; absence of contents; void space; vacuum
  • noun Want of solidity or substance; unsatisfactoriness; inability to satisfy desire; vacuity; hollowness.
  • noun Want of knowledge; lack of sense; vacuity of mind.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or feeling of being empty

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun having an empty stomach
  • noun an empty area or space
  • noun the state of containing nothing
  • noun the quality of being valueless or futile

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

empty +‎ -ness

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Examples

  • In advocating what he calls emptiness, he is in effect saying that it is possible to achieve all the benefits of Daoist emptiness without trying to achieve that extreme form of emptiness.

    Xunzi Robins, Dan 2007

  • This is what I call the emptiness of having everything.

    The Emptiness of (Having) Everything 2006

  • The feeling of emptiness is still there, so maybe i haven't completely forgiven him, and somtimes its hard to tell if i did forgive him.

    Obama sends message to dads on Father's Day 2009

  • But I kind of think all that emptiness is beautiful.

    and in the morning when i wake up jaylake 2009

  • The emptiness is the most notable thing about the workspace, he and his office mates have a huge amount of licences when it comes to arranging their space – the table in the second picture below is a ping-pong table created from wood they salvaged from the previous occupants remodelling of the space.

    The Rotterdamn Collective | Lifehacker Australia 2010

  • In substance there is emptiness, he wrote, but in emptiness there is substance.

    Shan-shui 2009

  • Her lower-topsails hung in limp emptiness from the yards, heavy with rain and flapping soggily when she rolled.

    CHAPTER XXVIII 2010

  • In substance there is emptiness, he wrote, but in emptiness there is substance.

    Archive 2009-06-01 2009

  • "Whatever notion we may have about emptiness is not emptiness," writes Glassman, "but merely an idea of emptiness."

    Shelley's Golden Wind: Zen Harmonics in _A Defence of Poetry_ and 'Ode to the WestWind' 2007

  • In other words its emptiness is not in spite of its existence.

    Hegel on Buddhism 2007

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