Word.ws English Dictionary

emptiness

emptiness noun: the state or feeling of being empty; an emotion that combines hollowness, numbness, disconnection and a lack of meaning in life, resulting in existential boredom, ennui or depression.

Noun

emptiness (countable and uncountable, plural emptinesses)

  1. The state or feeling of being empty; an emotion that combines hollowness, numbness, disconnection and a lack of meaning in life, resulting in existential boredom, ennui or depression.
  2. A void; a nothingness; something lacking existence.
    • Few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so...1897, H. G. Wells, The Star (Science Fiction)
    • It seems that they existed in some sort of previous incarnation of our universe, and use abstract terms to describe their existence, such as "feeding on concepts". They prepared for some sort of ascension, but then the Pattern came, which they describe at first as an all-consuming emptiness...2019 January 7, “Exploring the SCP Foundation: Pattern Screamers” (6:12 from the start), in The Exploring Series, archived from the original on 11 Jan 2023
  3. A nonexistence; a lack of existence.

Proper noun capitalized: Emptiness

Emptiness

  1. A Chinese constellation near Aquarius and Equuleus, one of the 28 lunar mansions and part of the Black Turtle.

emptiness meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

emptiness in Hindi

the state or feeling of being empty
रिक्तता riktatā, शून्यता śūnyatā

emptiness in Tamil

வெறுமை, சூனியம், இன்மை, பூச்சியம், ஒன்றுமில்லாமை, இல்லாமை

emptiness in Urdu

emptiness, meaninglessness
پول pol
emptiness
سونا sūnā
emptiness, void
خلا xalā

emptiness in Bengali

শূন্যতা, শূন্যত্ব
More languagesFewer languages
emptiness in Telugu
వెల్లడి vellaḍi
emptiness in Malayalam
വെറുമ veṟuma
emptiness in Kannada
ಶೂನ್ಯತೆ, ಬರಿದಾಗಿರುವುದು, ರಿಕ್ತತೆ, ಖಾಲಿಯಾಗಿರುವಿಕೆ
emptiness in Gujarati
ખાલીપણું, શૂન્યતા, ખાલીપન
emptiness in Odia
ଶୂନ୍ଯ଼ତା
emptiness in Nepali
खालीपन, रिक्तता, शून्यता

Examples of emptiness in a sentence

  • Jake had gone from the center of a teeming throng of people to the solitudinous emptiness of his lonely house.
  • No amount of shopping truly helps with emptiness, loneliness or sorrow.
  • I only knew a canyon of vast quaking emptiness with a river of the roughest, churniest despair.

All 26 example sentences with emptiness

Forms of emptiness

pluralemptinesses
alternative form (obsolete)emptinesse

Origin of emptiness

Inherited from Middle English emptynesse, from Old English ǣmtiġnes. By surface analysis, empty + -ness.

Calque from Chinese 虛宿／虚宿 (Xūxiù).

Words formed from emptiness

Questions about emptiness

What does emptiness mean?
Emptiness means the state or feeling of being empty; an emotion that combines hollowness, numbness, disconnection and a lack of meaning in life, resulting in existential boredom, ennui or depression.
What is emptiness in Hindi?
Emptiness in Hindi is रिक्तता (riktatā), शून्यता (śūnyatā). See Emptiness meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is emptiness?
Emptiness can be a noun or a proper noun.
What is the plural of emptiness?
The plural of emptiness is emptinesses.

Words near emptiness in the dictionary

  1. empties the clip
  2. empties the tank
  3. emptiest
  4. emptieth
  5. emptily
  6. emptiness
  7. emptinesses
  8. empting
  9. emptings
  10. emptins
  11. emptio venditio

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: emptiness (page history and authors); Emptiness (page history and authors); emptiness (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); خلا (Urdu) (page history and authors); emptiness (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); వెల్లడి (Telugu) (page history and authors); വെറുമ (Malayalam) (page history and authors); emptiness (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); emptiness (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); emptiness (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); emptiness (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vininn126-emptiness.wav.

Cite this entry: “emptiness.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/emptiness. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.