A vacuum cleaner is the loud machine that eats the dust from your floor. A motor, a bag or a cylinder, and a hose that always blocks.
It works by moving air fast rather than by creating a real vacuum, which is why the name is a small exaggeration. Britain calls the act hoovering after the brand, and Hoover is one of the few trademarks that became a verb. The bagless cyclone design changed the market entirely in the 1990s. Upright and cylinder are the two main shapes.
1phrasevacuum cleanerAn electrical machine that sucks up dust and dirt.
“The vacuum cleaner is in the cupboard under the stairs.”
Also accepted in games: vacuum, hoover
From vacuum + cleaner. By synchronic analysis, vacuum-clean (a back-formation) er.{{cite-book|author=Naděžda Stašková|chapter=English back-formation in the literature|title=English Back-Formation: Recent Trends in Usage: A Comprehensive Study of English Back-Formation in the 20th and the Early 21st Century|url=http://hdl.handle.net/11025/16618|location=Plzeň|publisher=[[w:University of West Bohemia|
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Around the House, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 28 of A Man Called Ove.
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