Void

Void (pronounced void)

(1) In law, having no legal force or effect; not legally binding or enforceable.

(2) Useless; ineffectual; vain; devoid; destitute (usually followed by of).

(3) Without contents; empty.

(4) Without an incumbent, as an office.

(5) In mathematics, of a set: empty.

(6) In card games, having no cards in a suit.

(7) An empty space or one with a sense of emptiness.

(8) Something experienced as a loss or privation:

(9) A gap or opening, as in a wall.

(10) A vacancy; vacuum.

(11) In typography, inside area of a character of type, such as the inside of an O.

(12) To make ineffectual; invalidate; nullify.

(13) To empty; discharge; evacuate.

(14) To depart from; to vacate (archaic).

(15) In computer programming, a function or method that does not return a value.

(16) In architecture, a differentiated treatment of space.

1250–1300: The adjectival form was from the Middle English voide & voyde, from the Anglo-French & Old French voide, voit, vuide, & vuit (source also of the Modern French vide), from the unattested Vulgar Latin vocīta & vocita, feminine of vocītus & vocitus, an unattested and dissimilated variant of the Latin vacīvus, vacuus & vocīvus, (empty) from vacāre (to be empty).  The verb was from the Middle English voiden, from the Anglo-French voider, from the Old French, from the unattested Vulgar Latin vocitāre, derivative of the unattested vocītus & vocitus, noun derivative of the adjective.  Root was the primitive Indo-European wak-, an extended form of the root eue- (to leave, abandon, give out).

Void circa 1300 was first a verb (to clear some place of something) with the meaning "to deprive (something) of legal validity" attested from the early fourteenth century.  The adjectival sense evolved in parallel with the verb, again circa 1300, the meaning "unoccupied, vacant" soon extending to "empty, vast, wide, hollow, waste, uncultivated, fallow" and as a noun, "opening, hole; loss".  The meaning "lacking or wanting (something)” is recorded from the early 1400s while "legally invalid, without legal efficacy" is attested from the mid fifteenth century.  The adjective voidable is from the late fifteenth century 15c; the sense of an "unfilled space, gap" dates from the 1610s and the meaning "absolute empty space, vacuum" is from 1727.  Voider and voidness are both derived nouns.

In diplomacy

In fourteenth century Europe, French was the most widely-spoken language and in 1539, the court of Francis I (1494–1547; King of France 1515-1547) declared French to be the official language of government.  It was in this era that diplomacy began to assume a recognizably modern form with an increasingly consistent use of titles, conventions and institutions.  From this position of cultural hegemony, French emerged as the language of diplomacy, a position enhanced as the European colonial empires expanded.  It wouldn’t be until well into the twentieth century, under mostly US influence, that English began first to run in parallel as a language of diplomacy and later to assume primacy, English and French being the first two official languages of the United Nations (UN).  However, the linguistic legacy endures in the handbooks of diplomacy which include the standardized titles and phrases of the profession.  One phrase still used is that when one diplomat refuses to accept a message from another, returning the envelope to the sender marked nul et non avenue (literally “null and void”), creating the diplomatic fiction the envelope was unopened and the message thus unread, thereby relieving both parties of the need to pursue the unpleasantness.

In architecture

Once reduced, in architecture there’s only form and space but it’s helpful to imagine some space as part of the form so there’s thus form, space and void, void being a space defined by the form and theorists layer this further by distinguishing between voids cognitive and functional.  Cognitive voids are those created for emotional and perceptional impact, a kind of (usually static) visual effect whereas functional voids fulfil a technical requirement, typically ventilation or the movement of people.  Theorists tend to classify cognitive voids in the language of art: conceptual, perceptual, or sculptural while the functional are grouped by traditional terms from architecture: as entrance, courtyard, circulation et al.  In the analysis of the theorists, cognitive voids exist either as transparent or permeable spaces, the former most used to create perceptual effects, the latter for the visual.

Functional void: Grand Central Terminal (the official abbreviation is GCT although the popular form is "Grand Central Station" (often clipped to "Grand Central")), Midtown Manhattan, New York City, 1929.

Unfortunately, the clerestories which once shone no longer shine.  Because of more recent development in the surrounding space, the sunlight no longer enters the CCT's void through the clerestoried windows is such an eye-catching way (left).  In modern skyscrapers, light-shafts or atriums can extend hundreds of feet to ensure what sunlight is available can be captured; there's now often little at ground level.  When the a scene from the Lindsay Lohan film Just my Luck (2006) (right) was shot in the GCT, it was in a dimmer ambiance.