vacuity

In the lull consequent on the departure--in that first vacuity which ensues on every separation, foreshadowing the great separation that is always overhanging all mankind--Arthur stood at his desk, looking dreamily out at a gleam of sun.

But, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began howling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas that are there; when the ivory-tusked Pequod sharply bowed to the blast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of silver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this desolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more dismal than before.

His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The lathe painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe.

A look of dull disappointment struggled with the vacuity of his face.

At length he hears An old-world tale: an Island of the Blest* -- So runs the legend -- in mid-ocean lies In realms of blue vacuity, too faint To be described; there gaily coloured towers Rise up like rainbow clouds, and many gentle And beautiful Immortals pass their days In peace.

It had that typical vagueness which is not vacuity, that blankness which is not simplicity, that look of being committed to nothing in particular, of standing in an attitude of general hospitality to the chances of life, of being very much at one's own disposal so characteristic of many American faces.

The sky wore, in another colour, the same likeness; a white vacuity of countenance with the lineaments gone.

What I write, whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that wrote so many continuous pages.

Perhaps some infatuated swain has ere this mistaken insensibility for modesty, dulness for maiden reserve, mere vacuity for sweet bashfulness, and a goose, in a word, for a swan.

The great traveller became quite interested in sounding the immense vacuity of my dulness to its lowest depths.

During this profound and soothing communion with his innermost beliefs he remained staring at the carpet, with a portentously solemn face and with a dull vacuity of eyes that seemed to gaze into the blankness of an empty hole.

He was tired, and he experienced that state of mental vacuity which comes at the end of an exhaustive discussion that has liberated some belief matured in the course of meditative years.