empty space

empty space (plural empty spaces)

1. An unoccupied space where something may be stored

   You can park your car in that empty space.

   You can put the key in that empty space.

2. An unoccupied area or volume.

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

   He spends all his time staring into empty space.

3. Vacuum; a space containing nothing at all

   Atoms are mostly empty space.

4. (figuratively) A feeling of longing for someone or something that is gone; a sense of a thing's absence.
   • 1986, Janet Quin-Harkin, My Secret Love, page 216:

     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.

   • 1998, Renny Christopher, Linda Strom, Lisa Orr, Working Class Studies: 1 & 2, page 175:

     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.

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

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

5. (figuratively) barren, desolate Land, empty of life and people.
   • 1975, Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital. 1848-1875, published 1995, page 168:

     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.