The Only Use of
vacuous
in
Flowers for Algernon -- Short Story
- His vacant eyes moved across the crowd of amused onlookers, he slowly mirrored their smiles and finally broke into an uncertain grin at the joke which he obviously did not understand. I felt sick inside as I looked at his dull, vacuous smile--the wide, bright eyes of a child, uncertain but eager to please.
p. 15.3vacuous = lacking intelligent thought
Definitions:
-
(1)
(vacuous) lacking intelligent thought
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(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
In addition to usage such as "vacuous comments" that indicate a lack of intelligent thought; vacuous can also indicate a lack of attention as in "a vacuous stare", or an absence of meaning as in "a vacuous life".
More rarely, and especially in older usage, vacuous may refer to physical emptiness -- such as "a vacuous warehouse".