Today's Word "lacuna"
Gap left by a missing part
on
Published in Vocabulary
lacuna \leh-KU-neh\ (noun) - A cavity or hollow; a hiatus or gap left by a missing part.
"Every mention my friend Jason made of his political campaign last fall resulted in a lengthy lacuna in the conversation at the New Year's Eve party."
From Latin lacuna "pool, pond, cavity, gap" from lacus "lake." "Lacuna" became French "lagune" and Italian "laguna" whence we borrowed "lagoon." The underlying root also developed into Gaelic loch "lake" (Loch Lomond, Loch Ness) and Serbian lokva "pool." The plural is "lacunae" [le-'ku-ney] and the adjective is "lacunal." A hiatus is usually a gap in a temporal or spatial continuum, such as the famous 18-minute hiatus in the Nixon tape that caused a large lacuna in the transcript.
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