Both Uses
vacuous
in
Flowers for Algernon — Novel
(Edited)
- Photographs (I didn't know they had been taken) were passed around and commented on, and I could see by the nods and smiles that most people there agreed with him that the "dull, vacuous facial expression" had been transformed into an "alert, intelligent appearance."
p. 160.1vacuous = lacking intelligent thought
- I felt sick inside as I looked at his dull, vacuous smile—the wide, bright eyes of a child, uncertain but eager to please, and I realized what I had recognized in him.
p. 198.7 *
Definitions:
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(1)
(vacuous) lacking intelligent thought
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(2)
(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".