evacuate

/ɪˈvækjueɪt/

/ɪˈvækjueɪt/

Other forms: evacuated; evacuating; evacuates

To evacuate is to flee, like how people leave an area when a hurricane is coming. It also means to empty something completely.

If you have to evacuate your home, something horrible is probably happening, like a natural disaster. People evacuate when something like a tornado or act of terrorism makes their homes unsafe. To evacuate also means to empty completely, in the bathroom-oriented sense of evacuating (emptying) your bowels. Similarly, if a chemist empties and therefore creates a vacuum in a flask, she has evacuated the flask. When you evacuate, you clear out.

Definitions of evacuate

1. verb

   move out of an unsafe location into safety
   “After the earthquake, residents were evacuated”

   type of:

   move

   change residence, affiliation, or place of employment
2. verb

   move people from their homes or country
   type of:

   displace

   cause to move, usually with force or pressure
3. verb

   empty completely
   “evacuate the bottle”

   type of:

   empty

   make void or empty of contents
4. verb

   create a vacuum in (a bulb, flask, reaction vessel)
   type of:

   empty

   make void or empty of contents
5. verb

   excrete or discharge from the body
   synonyms: empty, void

   types:

   suction

   empty or clean (a body cavity) by the force of suction

   type of:

   egest, eliminate, excrete, pass

   eliminate from the body