lacuna
Americannoun
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a gap or missing part, as in a manuscript, series, or logical argument; hiatus.
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Anatomy. one of the numerous minute cavities in the substance of bone, supposed to contain nucleate cells.
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Botany. an air space in the cellular tissue of plants.
noun
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a gap or space, esp in a book or manuscript
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biology a cavity or depression, such as any of the spaces in the matrix of bone
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another name for coffer
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of lacuna
First recorded in 1655–65; from Latin lacūna “ditch, pit, hole, gap, deficiency,” akin to lacus “basin, tub, vat, lake”; see lake 1. Cf. lagoon
Explanation
A lacuna is a gap or missing part. If you complain that there's a major lacuna in the bake sale, the lack of brownies is probably to blame. The noun lacuna means an empty space or a hole where something should be. It's used a lot to talk about missing parts of books or manuscripts, either because lost pages have created a lacuna, or because censors have blacked out or removed parts of them. In the study of anatomy, a lacuna is a hollowed-out place or a cavity within a bone. In Latin, lacuna means "pit or hole," and its plural is lacunae.
Vocabulary lists containing lacuna
Blasted to Smithereens: Synonyms for "Break"
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The Gene
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Sapiens
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“Seurat and the Sea,” a scholarly and astonishingly beautiful show now at the Courtauld Gallery, and organized by Karen Serres, the museum’s senior curator of paintings, fills that critical lacuna.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 28, 2026
It is this lack of maternal attention that sends Ellis’ two older sisters on different paths, with the same goal in mind: to fill the lacuna left by their mother’s benign neglect.
From Los Angeles Times • May 13, 2025
A single palm-size vertebra, its central lacuna heart-shaped, had us wondering about its origin story.
From New York Times • Mar. 27, 2023
"You now have empty shelves. The return of those objects will be like filling those shelves. There's a lacuna in our history because those objects were taken away."
From BBC • Oct. 27, 2021
My minimal coverage of Japan in previous editions of Guns, Germs, and Steel constituted the most important geographic lacuna of my book.
From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
