What does evacuate mean?
Evacuate is a verb with two core uses: to move people away from a place because it is unsafe, and to empty a space of its contents. Its most familiar sense belongs to emergencies — officials evacuate buildings before bombs are defused, residents evacuate coastal towns before hurricanes, and hospitals may evacuate entire wards during fires. It can be used transitively (they evacuated the village) or intransitively (the villagers evacuated at dawn). Beyond crisis contexts, it appears in scientific and technical writing for removing air or fluid from a vessel, and in formal medicine for emptying the body's contents. Derived forms include evacuation (the act or process) and evacuee (a person who has been evacuated). The word carries urgency and gravity; it is rarely used casually. Its Latin root vacare, meaning 'to be empty', connects it to words like vacant and vacation, giving it a precise literal heart: to make a place empty.
verbTo remove people from a place of danger, or to leave such a place oneself; also, to empty a space or container completely.
- To move people out of a place because it is dangerous.
- (Of a person) to leave a dangerous place.
- To empty something completely (of its contents), including a medical sense of emptying the bowels.
"Officials ordered residents to evacuate the coastal town ahead of the hurricane."
"Firefighters evacuated the office tower after smoke was detected on the tenth floor."
"Thousands were forced to evacuate when floodwaters breached the levees overnight."
The word 'evacuate' comes from Latin vacare — the same root as 'vacation' — so every evacuation is literally an order to make a place vacant.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of evacuate
Evacuate comes from the Latin verb evacuare, formed from e- ('out') plus vacuare ('to empty'), itself derived from vacare, 'to be empty'. English adopted it around the early 17th century, first in the general sense of emptying something out, later extending to removing people from dangerous places. It shares this Latin root with vacant, vacuum, vacation, and evasive, all ultimately tracing back to vacare's idea of emptiness or absence.
Related word forms
How evacuate is actually used
Standard in both formal and everyday registers. In British English, 'be evacuated' is common for civilians moved to safety; the transitive use with people as object ('evacuate the residents') is preferred over 'evacuate from' in careful writing. The medical and bodily senses are technical or euphemistic rather than casual.
Easily confused with evacuate
Exacerbate means to make a problem worse, while evacuate means to remove people from danger or empty a place.