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 is a fit Similitude of a Fire within, as 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.
