cavity
(ˈkævɪtɪ)
Also 6 cauyte, cauitie.
[a. F. cavité, in 13th c. caveté, (= It. cavità, Sp. cavidad), on L. type *cavitāt-em (prob. in late L. or Romanic), f. cav-us hollow: see -ity.]
† 1. Hollowness. Obs. rare.
| a 1679 T. Goodwin Wks. III. 565 (R.) The fire of an oven..into which fire is put to heat it, and the heat made more intense by the cavity or hollowness of the place. |
2. A hollow place; a void or empty space within a solid body.
| 1541 R. Copland Galyen's Terap. 2 D j, Before that the cauyte be replete with flesshe. 1603 Holland Plutarch's Mor. 1022 The cavities as well of the mouth as of the stomacke. 1695 Woodward Nat. Hist. Earth (1723) I. 24 Within or without the Shell, in its Cavity or upon its Convexity. 1841–71 T. R. Jones Anim. Kingd. 3 Creatures whose hearts are divided into four cavities—Mammalia and Birds. 1862 Stanley Jew. Ch. (1877) I. viii. 159 ‘The well’, the deep cavity sunk in the earth by the art of man. 1878 Huxley Physiogr. 192 Little cavities, or vesicles, in this scoria, or cellular lava. |
3. ‘In naval architecture, the displacement formed in the water by the immersed bottom and sides of the vessel’ (Smyth Sailor's Word-bk.).
| c 1850 Rudim. Navig. (Weale) 104 Centre of Cavity, or of Displacement, the centre of that part of the ship's body which is immersed, and which is also the centre of the vertical force that the water exerts to support the vessel. |
4. cavity wall, a double wall with an internal hollow space.
| 1910 Encycl. Brit. IV. 522/1 Buildings in exposed situations are frequently built with cavity-walls. 1958 House & Garden Feb. 69/1 The cavity walls have an outer leaf of yellow-buff bricks. |