vacuum
va·cu·um/ˈvæ.kjuːm/noun, verb
vacuum is spelled V-A-C-U-U-M, 3 syllables: va·cu·um. The wrong spelling people search most is vaccum: about 5,640 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 10 of all searches for the word. Vacuum is a noun meaning “A region of space that contains no matter”. The plural of vacuum is vacuums or vacua.
How many letters and syllables are in vacuum?
| Letters | 6: V-A-C-U-U-M |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3: va·cu·um |
| In writing | 12 times per million words; the 6,138th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 5; the most searched, vaccum, about 5,640 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell vacuum?
Vacuum is spelled V-A-C-U-U-M. 5 wrong spellings are searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for vacuum in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is vacuum?
Vacuum appears 12 times per million words in written English, the 6,138th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce vacuum?
- /ˈvæ.kjuːm/
- /ˈvæ.kjuː.əm/
Vacuum has 3 syllables, split va·cu·um in writing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-vacuum.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of vacuum
- vacuums plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- vacua plural, rare
- vacuüm rare
- vacuuming participle, present
- vacuumed participle, past
- vacuä plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does vacuum mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A region of space that contains no matter.
- 2
The condition of rarefaction, or reduction of pressure below that of the atmosphere, in a vessel, such as the condenser of a steam engine, which is nearly exhausted of air or steam, etc.
a vacuum of 26 inches of mercury, or 13 pounds per square inch
- 3
colloquialEllipsis of vacuum cleaner.
- 4
A spacetime having tensors of zero magnitude.
- 5
A ground state of a quantum field or of local spacetime, or more abstractly the lowest-energy state of a system.
- 6
A description of spacetime resulting from a particular compactification of spatial dimensions.
- 7
An emptiness in life created by a loss of a person who was close, or of an occupation.
- 8
An exercise in which one draws their abdomen towards the spine.
verb
- 1
To clean (something) with a vacuum cleaner.
- 2
To use a vacuum cleaner.
- 3
To optimise a database or database table by physically removing deleted tuples.
noun
- 1
rareRare spelling of vacuum.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate vacuum?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of vacuum: vac.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Vacuum in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | vide, vacuum , passer l'aspirateur |
| German | Vakuum , staubsaugen |
| Portuguese | vácuo , aspirar |
| Spanish | vacuo , aspirar |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does vacuum come from?
Borrowed from New Latin vacuum (“vacuum”), a subsense of Classical Latin vacuum (“empty space”), a substantivised form of vacuus (“empty”); related to vacāre (“to be empty”). The exercise sense comes from analogy to the sucking action of a vacuum cleaner.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).