vacuous
Reserved for the harmlessly stupid and truly meaningless, vacuous is a smart-sounding way to describe something dumb. Celebrity gossip and reality TV are usually pretty vacuous, even if they're fun.
If someone smiles at you in a way that seems fake or empty, you could describe the smile as vacuous. An example of a vacuous comment would be a politician promising to make things better without explaining how. If something is vacuous, it's like a vacuum — hollow, empty, devoid of substance.
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Vocabulary lists containing vacuous
Nick Carraway rents a summer house in Long Island where he befriends his mysterious neighbor Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire who hides behind an extravagant and decadent lifestyle.
Words selected by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
January 16 is National Nothing Day. Mark this empty occasion by learning this list of words describing things that are absent, or missing, or never there at all. It turns out that there are lots of ways to say nothing!