Make Your Point > Archived Issues > LACUNA
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pronounce
LACUNA:
Say it "luh KYOO nuh."
Or, if you prefer, you can say it "luh KOO nuh." (That way, it rhymes with "tuna," "kahuna," and, you know, "Hakuna [Matata].")
To hear it, click here.
connect this word to others:
When we take a word and give it a diminutive suffix, it gets cuter:
duck becomes duckling;
Charles becomes Charlie;
burro becomes burrito;
organ becomes organelle;
city becomes c____el;
corn becomes k___el;
and, in Latin, lacus ("lake") becomes lacuna ("little lake: a pit or a hole").
In English, the meaning of lacuna is a little less cute. We use it to mean "a gap, an empty spot, or something missing."
Speaking of lacunae or blank spots, could you recall those two words above with the blanks?
(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)
definition:
In Latin, lacus means "a pool, a pond, or a lake." And a small one of those is a lacuna--in other words, "a pit, or a hole."
We took lacuna straight into English around 1663, but we fiddled with the meaning a bit: we made it more figurative.
In English, a lacuna is a gap, an empty space, a blank spot, or a missing part.
grammatical bits:
Part of speech: noun, the countable kind: "there's a lacuna on page six of the manuscript," "it's a lacuna in their records."
Other common forms:
For the plural, use either the formal "lacunae" or the more relaxed "lacunas." Pronounce that formal one either "luh KYOO nee" or "luh KYOO nigh."
When we're talking about figurative lacunas, we don't have a good, well-established adjective. You can take your pick, but there's a scientific flavor to all of these: "lacunal," "lacunar," "lacunate," or "lacunary."
There are lots of other forms used in biological contexts. We won't worry about those.
how to use it:
This word has a formal, scholarly, scientific tone.
We often use it concretely to describe the missing or marked-out bits in an old manuscript, or the cavities or empty spaces in the bodies of humans, animals, and plants.
To apply this word abstractly, talk about a lacuna in any system, like a legal one, an academic one, or a governmental one. Or, talk about a lacuna in any body of documentation, like someone's tax files, a company's sales records, or a city's newspaper archives. Or, talk about a lacuna in someone's theory, argument, synthesis, analysis, philosophy, or proposition. Basically, when you point out the existence of a figurative lacuna, you're saying, "Something's missing here, and it needs to be addressed."
Other than simply pointing out the existence of lacunas, you might talk about something that suffers from lacunas, or something that's riddled with lacunas. Or, talk about people exposing, venturing into, stumbling into, filling, or hiding lacunas.
examples:
"While I am on the subject. I find the giant lacuna in American historiography, the colonial side of the Interregnum particularly, so strange as to exceed in interest most subjects upon which learned attention has actually fallen."
— Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here?: Essays, 2018
"[Jennifer Clack] worked especially on ‘Romer’s Gap’ — the 30-million-year break in the fossil record between the Late Devonian forms and the more advanced tetrapods of the mid-Carboniferous. She suspected that this lacuna might be a sampling artefact. She assembled a team of researchers to investigate sediments..."
— Per Ahlberg, Nature, 22 April 2020
has this page helped you understand "lacuna"?
study it:
Explain the meaning of "lacuna" without saying "a gap" or "a thing that should have been included but wasn't."
try it out:
Fill in the blanks: "(Some book, film, effort, method, campaign, product, belief, or philosophy) suffered from a lacuna, (ignoring, misunderstanding, or underrating or overrating) (some important thing)."
Example 1: "This book suffers from a lacuna, ignoring the fact that people these days handle much of their business online."
Example 2: "The Sanders campaign suffered from a similar lacuna, overrating its appeal to poor whites and to black voters in general."
— Tommy Craggs, Slate, 6 November 2016
before you review, play:
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
This month, our game is "Caption These!"
In each issue this month, caption the images below (A, B, and C) by matching them to the vocabulary words they illustrate (1, 2, and 3). Need a closer look? Give the images a click. And, if you can, explain the exact meaning of each word. I'll share the answers in the following issue. Good luck!
From the previous issue:
Answers:
A: clarion, B: rococo, C: clairvoyant.
(To review a word, give it a click.)
Try these today:
1: pigeonhole
2: pillory
3: rivet
review this word:
A. DIM.
B. TRAGIC.
C. SUPERFLUOUS.
2. Paul Bowles wrote, "The more one hears and learns, the more conscious one becomes of one's _____, of the vast lacunae in one's knowledge."
A. errors
B. curiosity
C. ignorance
a final word:
I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.
I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.
From my blog:
36 ways to study words.
Why we forget words, & how to remember them.
How to use sophisticated words without being awkward.
To be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.
Disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.
When we take a word and give it a diminutive suffix, it gets cuter:
In Latin, lacus means "a pool, a pond, or a lake." And a small one of those is a lacuna--in other words, "a pit, or a hole."
Part of speech: noun, the countable kind: "there's a lacuna on page six of the manuscript," "it's a lacuna in their records."
This word has a formal, scholarly, scientific tone.
"While I am on the subject. I find the giant lacuna in American historiography, the colonial side of the Interregnum particularly, so strange as to exceed in interest most subjects upon which learned attention has actually fallen."
Explain the meaning of "lacuna" without saying "a gap" or "a thing that should have been included but wasn't."
Fill in the blanks: "(Some book, film, effort, method, campaign, product, belief, or philosophy) suffered from a lacuna, (ignoring, misunderstanding, or underrating or overrating) (some important thing)."
Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.
1: pigeonhole
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