A vacation, or holiday, is when you take some time off from work or school to relax. Most people go away for their vacations, and often go to stay near a beach.

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A vacuum cleaner, or sometimes a hoover, is a machine that is used to suck dirt and dust from floors inside your house. It works by making a vacuum inside it by pumping the air out of a chamber inside the cleaner, so that air from outside rushes in to fill up the space that is left. The dust is removed from the air by filtering it, usually through some cloth.

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Vampires are a mythical creature which is said to exist by drinking people's blood. They are said to only come out at night as daylight can destroy them. It is also said they can only be killed by a stake through the heart, or by a silver bullet. A vampire has no reflection, so they cannot be seen in a mirror.

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A vandal is someone who breaks something that doesn't belong to them, for no reason. People who graffiti are called vandals. The picture is of a vandalised bus stop.

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Vanilla beans are the seed pods of a kind of orchid. When they are grown outside Mexico, they need to be pollinated by hand. Vanilla has a strong, aromatic smell and is used in many different sweets, particularly icecream. The part of vanilla that makes the flavour can also be made artificially, and is a lot cheaper than natural vanilla essense.

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A vase is a container without a lid, which is used to hold cut flowers. Vases are often very pretty. People have been making vases for thousands of years, usually made from clay and painted different colours.

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A vault is a structure made from intersecting arches, or many parallel arches, to make a large space out of a compressive material like stone or brick.

With many vaulted spaces being built underground, a vault also became known as a place to store treasure, and today a bank vault is a locked box inside a bank where you can store valuables.

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A vegetable is any edible part of a plant that is not very sweet. Some things that are called vegetables are really fruit, like the tomato. Vegetables may be the fruit, leaves (cabbage), stems (asparagus, celery or rhubarb) or roots (carrot, turnip) of a plant.

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A vehicle is any non-living means of being moved around. A horse that you can ride is not a vehicle. Examples of vehicles are boats, planes, trucks and trains.

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A veil is a piece of cloth that is used to hide something. Women in some countries wear veils over their faces every day. In other countries, women wear veils when they get married.

Photo by Emery Way