empty space

plural empty spaces

1. An unoccupied space where something may be stored

   You can put the key in that empty space.

   1 more example

   You can park your car in that empty space.

2. An unoccupied area or volume.

   He spends all his time staring into empty space.

   1 more example

   The empty space at the sides of the page is called the "margin".

3. Vacuum; a space containing nothing at all

   Atoms are mostly empty space.

4. figurativelyA feeling of longing for someone or something that is gone; a sense of a thing's absence.

   Now, there is only empty space where the future should be.

   2004, Eleanor Vincent, Swimming with Maya: A Mother's Story, page 211

   2 more examples

   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. figurativelyBarren, 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