Vacated

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To have left a location or position, especially one that was occupied or inhabited
2. To have moved out of a space or given up occupancy, making it empty
3. To withdraw from an area or position previously held, leaving it unoccupied

Etymology: "Vacated" is the past tense of "vacate," and the verb's story begins in a courtroom rather than a house. Its earliest English sense was legal: to annul something, such as a judgment or a decision, by declaring it empty of effect. That legal meaning grew from the Middle English noun "vacat," an entry in a register noting an absence or cancellation, which itself came from the Latin "vacat," the third-person singular of "vacō," meaning "to be empty" or "to be idle." The everyday sense of leaving a place arrived later and by a different route. It likely developed under the influence of "vacant," an older borrowing meaning unoccupied, so that to vacate a room came to mean making it empty. Early Modern English also used "vacate" for the ending of an official appointment, which left a post vacant, and that usage probably helped push the verb toward the idea of departing a position or property.

Synonyms: abandoned, left, departed, emptied, released

Antonyms: occupied, filled, inhabited