How to Use vacuous in a Sentence

vacuous

adjective
  • He had a vacuous expression on his face.
  • Maybe John-John was a vacuous jock type, but even hunks have souls.
    — Rafaela Bassili, Vulture, 13 Feb. 2026
  • Harper Lee was not slight, was not vacuous.
    — Literary Hub, 17 Dec. 2025
  • The present is vacuous, a vessel for the past, and the dead are more real than the living.
    — Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, 5 Oct. 2021
  • Why are the lives and opinions of vacuous celebrities leading our news?
    — Orange County Register, 14 Feb. 2017
  • But the vacuous smile this throwback musical leaves with you is hardly a crime.
    — Charles McNulty, latimes.com, 23 Oct. 2017
  • Fallon, for his part, plays his usual role of affable if vacuous host.
    — Hershal Pandya, Vulture, 8 Aug. 2025
  • But the words nasty, vacuous and damaging to democracy come to mind.
    — John Baer, Philly.com, 9 Apr. 2018
  • Great idea, but the vacuous execution was a flop with the public, for all kinds of reasons.
    — Sharyn Jackson, Star Tribune, 29 Jan. 2021
  • The top 100 list says a whole lot about how vacuous Twitter has become.
    — Kevin Maney, Newsweek, 10 Jan. 2017
  • This, not parsing the body language of world leaders at a vacuous meet-and-greet, is what the press should be covering.
    — Walter Russell Mead, WSJ, 10 July 2017
  • Gene is a nice if somewhat vacuous young male, although not entirely human.
    — David Holahan, USA TODAY, 19 Dec. 2017
  • Both sell a vacuous simulacrum of a lifestyle that does not match up with reality.
    — T.d. Williams, The Root, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Their ceaseless quest for distraction ends up exposing them to the vacuous truth of normal life.
    — Sheila Liming, The Atlantic, 31 Dec. 2022
  • The restaurant is a no-frills affair, a vacuous space with fluorescent lights and vinyl flooring.
    — Sean Timberlake, Sacbee.com, 6 Mar. 2026
  • By contrast, grievers hear so many vacuous phrases that a little straight talk can often be a welcome relief.
    — Bruce Feiler, New York Times, 1 Oct. 2016
  • Ample use of soft materials help with sound absorption in the vacuous space.
    — Sean Timberlake, Sacbee.com, 20 Apr. 2026
  • This is such a vague and general admonishment to be almost vacuous.
    — Razib Khan, Discover Magazine, 14 Sep. 2013
  • One problem with assessing the rise and fall of wokeness is that the term is vacuous to the point of being meaningless.
    — Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 22 Feb. 2023
  • Unlike the vacuous domes now home to Final Fours, this perspective is known to help shooters find their touch.
    — Michael Casagrande | [email protected], al, 27 Mar. 2021
  • In its environments—sumptuous, vacuous, cold—there is a sense of menace.
    — Megan Garber, The Atlantic, 13 Oct. 2019
  • Any clever editor can bend them to accommodate the raison d’etre of all but the most vacuous pieces of journalism.
    — Andrew Wallenstein, Variety, 11 Dec. 2024
  • This show began in a place of vacuous amorality and, in this fourth outing, restates once more that the people at the center of the frame are very, very bad.
    — Daniel D'addario, Variety, 18 Jan. 2022
  • The songs almost never advanced plot, and instead over-indulged in vacuous character study.
    — Samantha Allen, Them, 4 Oct. 2024
  • Here comes Clinton Heylin to hew a path through the trash heap of vacuous biographies and inferior works.
    — John Semley, The New Republic, 26 May 2021
  • The vacuous idea was to simply log into the generative AI app and start typing.
    — Lance Eliot, Forbes, 18 Mar. 2025
  • And from vacuous Sidney Poitier movies and the promises after riots.
    — Gail Sheehy, Daily Intelligencer, 9 Sep. 2017
  • People may have written the band off to be sort of vacuous and disposable, but that documentary really did change a lot of people's minds about the band.
    — Izzy Grinspan, Harper's BAZAAR, 29 Oct. 2021
  • The verses are vacuous, the insults have no teeth, and just when the whole thing seems to be leading up to a gigantic redemptive chorus, suddenly pop!
    — Nate Jones, Vulture, 20 May 2024
  • The verses are vacuous, the insults have no teeth, and just when the whole thing seems to be leading up to a gigantic redemptive chorus, suddenly pop!
    — Nate Jones, Vulture, 20 May 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'vacuous.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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