empty space

Noun

empty space (plural empty spaces)

1. An unoccupied space where something may be stored
   • You can park your car in that empty space.
   • You can put the key in that empty space.
2. An unoccupied area or volume.
   • The empty space at the sides of the page is called the "margin".
   • He spends all his time staring into empty space.
3. Vacuum; a space containing nothing at all
   • Atoms are mostly empty space.
4. (figuratively) A feeling of longing for someone or something that is gone; a sense of a thing's absence.
   • It didn't seem possible that he wasn't going to be standing by the Dumpster, waiting for me at lunch, or meeting me in the science lab after school. I felt an empty space where my heart had been.1986, Janet Quin-Harkin, My Secret Love, page 216
   • The body of the working-class man of the 1930s — and to an extent its text — is hungry, an empty space once filled by its labor.1998, Renny Christopher, Linda Strom, Lisa Orr, Working Class Studies: 1 & 2, page 175
5. (figuratively) Barren, desolate land, empty of life and people.
   • After 1849 ‘the West’ ceased to be a sort of frontier of infinity and became instead a large empty space of prairie, desert and mountain, suspended between two rapidly developing areas to the east and along the Pacific.1975, Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital. 1848-1875, published 1995, page 168