evacuated

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of evacuate.

   Authorities evacuated thousands of residents ahead of the wildfire.

   The building was evacuated within minutes of the alarm.

   Note

   A regular -ed form doing double duty: alone it is the past tense (crews evacuated the town), and with have or be it is the participle (the town has been evacuated). Its object can be either the place or the people, because the verb means both to empty somewhere and to make someone leave. In medical contexts it can also mean discharged from the bowels or bladder, so context matters.

   Firefighters evacuated the school before the roof collapsed.

   Hundreds of patients were evacuated to a hospital across the river.

2. 2
   adjective

   Cleared of its population, which has been moved away through an organized evacuation.

   The evacuated village stood silent under a sky full of smoke.

   Soldiers patrolled the evacuated district to deter looters.

   Similardeserted, abandoned, empty

   Oppositeoccupied, inhabited, populated

3. 3
   adjective

   Containing a vacuum; having had the air or other gas removed from inside.

   The evacuated flask kept its contents cold for hours.

   Light bulbs use an evacuated bulb to stop the filament from burning up.

   Similarairless

   Note

   Here what has been taken out is gas, not people. An evacuated vessel has had its air pumped down to a pressure well below atmospheric, so its walls bear the full push of the air outside. That is why a thin glass flask can implode with a pop. The word sits naturally with containers, such as an evacuated flask, tube, bulb or chamber, unlike the emptied-of-people meaning.

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