intervacuum

English

Etymology

Formed as inter- +‎ vacuum, but compare the Latin intervacō (“I am empty between”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: ĭntəvăʹkyo͞oəm,, IPA^(key): /ɪntəˈvækjuːəm/

Noun

intervacuum (plural intervacua)

1. An intervening empty space; a vacant interval.
   • 1827 April, Samuel Taylor Coleridge [aut.], and Kathleen Coburn and Anthony John Harding [eds.], The Notebooks of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, volume V: “1827–1834”, part 1: ‘Text’, (2002, Princeton University Press, →ISBN, entry 5504: ff11ᵛ–12

     In the distribution of the Animals themselves, the Subjects and the products of this energy, into the principal Classes, we do not suppose chasms & intervacua or empty Interspaces between the Classes, but ascend from a lower to a higher by an interliminary — and the same principle holds good in the Dynamics of Organic Nature, and the Enumeration and the Order of the three Constitutive Forms of the Vital Energy.

Adjective

intervacuum (not comparable)

1. (physics) Between regions of vacuum (or of very low pressure)
   • 1990, Gerardo Beni, Vacuum mechatronics:

     UHV technique for intervacuum sample transfer...

   • 2003, Gerardo Giruzzi, EC-12: proceedings of the 12th Joint Workshop on Electron Cyclotron Emission...:

     The intervacuum space was monitored continuously, a change in pressure implied to a rupture of the isolation between this volume and either the torus or waveguide vacuums.

References

• “† Interva·cuum” listed on page 423 of volume V (H–K), § ii (I) of A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles [1st ed., 1901]
    † Interva·cuum. Obs. rare. [Inter- 2 b. Cf. L. intervacāre to be empty between.] An intervening empty space; a vacant interval. [¶] 1627 E. F. Hist. Edw. II (1680) 24 The intervacuum of their absence.
• “†interˈvacuum” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2nd ed., 1989]