vacate

1. 1.

   leave (a job, post, or position) voluntarily

   “She vacated the position when she got pregnant”

   “The chairman resigned when he was found to have misappropriated funds”

   Synonymsresignrenouncegive up

   Broaderleave office

   Narrowerabdicate
2. 2.

   leave behind empty; move out of

   “You must vacate your office by tonight”

   Synonymsemptyabandon

   Broaderleave
3. 3.

   cancel officially

   “He revoked the ban on smoking”

   “lift an embargo”

   “vacate a death sentence”

   Synonymsrevokeannulliftcountermandreverserepealoverturnrescind

   Broadercancel

   Narrowerrenege

Other forms of vacate

past tense

vacated·

present participle

vacating·

third person

vacates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about vacate

What does vacate mean?

vacate means "leave (a job, post, or position) voluntarily". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in vacate?

vacate has 2 syllables: va-cate. The stress falls on "va". In IPA it is /ˈveɪkeɪt/.

What is another word for vacate?

Close synonyms include resign, renounce, give up, empty, abandon. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is vacate a common word?

vacate is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.