Word.ws English Dictionary

in a vacuum

in a vacuum prepositional phrase: divorced from its proper context and therefore suffering from incomplete analysis.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Divorced from its proper context and therefore suffering from incomplete analysis.
    • He is fond of saying that "nothing happens in a vacuum", by which he means that external factors always matter in at least some ways; sometimes he exaggerates this principle by claiming polemically that "there are no coincidences".
    • Speaking at a UN general debate on the Middle East in New York, Guterres created fury when he said: “It is important to … recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.”2023 October 25, Patrick Wintour, quoting António Guterres, “Israel says it will ban UN staff after secretary general’s comments”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Questions about in a vacuum

What does in a vacuum mean?
In a vacuum means divorced from its proper context and therefore suffering from incomplete analysis.
What part of speech is in a vacuum?
In a vacuum is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in a vacuum in the dictionary

  1. in a stew
  2. in a stound
  3. in a sweat
  4. in a tizzy
  5. in a trench coat
  6. in a vacuum
  7. in a walk
  8. in a way
  9. in a way of speaking
  10. in a while
  11. in a while, crocodile

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in a vacuum (page history and authors). 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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Cite this entry: “in a vacuum.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_a_vacuum. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.