vacate

What it means

1. To move out of a dwelling or other property, either by choice or by eviction.

   You are hereby ordered to vacate the premises within 14 days.

   2 more examples

   I have to vacate my house by midday, as the new owner is moving in.

   The dynamic tests at Wildenrath use continuous test tracks built on the site of a former Royal Air Force station that was vacated after the end of the Cold War.

   2023 November 29, Philip Haigh, “New Piccadilly Line trains put to the test”, in RAIL, number 997, page 26

2. To leave an office or position.

   He vacated his coaching position because of the corruption scandal.

3. transitivelawTo have a court judgement set aside; to annul.

   The judge vacated the earlier decision when new evidence was presented.

   1 more example

   On Thursday, the New York court of appeals vacated his conviction after concluding that a trial judge permitted jurors to see and hear too much evidence not directly related to the charges he faced. It also erased his 23-year prison sentence and ordered a retrial.

   2024 April 27, Maya Yang, “Disgraced former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein hospitalized”, in The Observer, →ISSN

In a sentence

I have to vacate my house by midday, as the new owner is moving in.

Where it comes from

1. Latinvacat
2. Middle Englishvacat“absence or cancellation noted in a register”
3. Englishvacate

Originally used in the legal sense "to annul", a denominal from Early Modern English vacat (“legal annulment”), a development from Middle English vacat (“absence or cancellation noted in a register”), from Latin vacat, third-person singular present active indicative of vacō (“to be idle; to be unoccupied”, literally “to be empty”). The primary modern sense "to move out" likely developed under the influence of older borrowing vacant (“unoccupied”), in combination with the Early Modern use of vacate to refer to the termination of official appointments to office, which would leave those position vacant.