hiatus

Noun

hiatus (countable and uncountable, plural hiatus or hiatuses or (nonstandard) hiati)

1. A gap in a series, making it incomplete.
   • Even the mechanical engineer comes at last to an end of his figures, and must stand up, a practical man, face to face with the discrepancies of nature and the hiatuses of theory.1912, Robert Louis Stevenson, Records of a Family of Engineers

   Synonyms:

   break

2. An interruption, break, pause or absence.
   • The band decided to go on hiatus, citing creative differences.
   • It is wonderful that you should have slipped back into your American life so easily after your English hiatus.1895, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, The Stark Munro Letters: […], London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   breather, moratorium, recess, break, cessation, demurral, gap, caesura, halt, halting

3. An temporary break from work, especially one which is unexpected.
4. A gap in geological strata.
   • The beginning of the Mesozoic Era on the Colorado Plateau is marked by a regional hiatus or break of sedimentary deposition that lasted about 25 to 30 Ma.2012, Chinle Miller, “The Tectonic Forces of the Mesozoic”, in In Mesozoic Lands: The Mesozoic Geology of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, Kindle edition, page 33
5. An opening in an organ.
   • Hiatus aorticus is an opening in the diaphragm through which aorta and thoracic duct pass.
6. (sometimes, uncountable) A syllable break between two vowels, without an intervening consonant.
   • A hiatus is agreeable to any Polynesian ear; the ear even of the stranger soon grows used to these barbaric voids; but only in the Marquesan will you find such names as Haaii and Paaaeua, when each individual vowel must be separately uttered.1891 February–December, Robert Louis Stevenson, In the South Seas […], New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, published 1896, →OCLC