lacuna

Noun

lacuna (plural lacunae or (obsolete) lacunæ or lacunas)

1. A small opening; a small pit or depression, especially in bone.
   1. (microscopy) A space visible between cells, allowing free passage of light.
2. A small blank space; a gap or vacancy; a hiatus.
   • "Our young friend makes up for many obvious mental lacunæ by some measure of primitive common sense," remarked Challenger.1912, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World […], London; New York, N.Y.: Hodder and Stoughton, →OCLC
   1. An absent part, especially in a book or other piece of writing, often referring to an ancient manuscript or similar.
      • Long lacunae in this inscription make interpretation difficult.
   2. (figuratively) Any gap, break, hole, or lack in a set of things; something missing.
      • For Beatrice Nutter, there will always be conspicuous lacunae in our mutual understanding, but after almost 30 years here, the anomalies now delight rather than confound her.2008 March 23, Elizabeth Day, “The great French love affair with la vie anglaise”, in The Observer, →ISSN
      • If the researcher cannot adequately hear a specific conversation due to its low volume or other acoustic interference, then this data point can be passed over with the understanding that such lacunae will be randomly distributed over the data collecting period.2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, volume 41, number 7, →DOI...
   3. A language gap, which occurs when there is no direct translation in the target language for a lexical term found in the source language.