Lacunes

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A word denoting missing sections or voids in a written work, it describes inadequacies or areas lacking detail in research, and can also refer to gaps in understanding or knowledge on a subject
2. This term refers to absent or incomplete parts found in texts, indicating shortcomings in scholarly writings, and can also imply voids in information or insights within a topic
3. Openings or missing segments in a manuscript or body of work ; failures or lacks in the completeness of information or scholarly investigation

Etymology: "Lacunes" is the plural of "lacune," a noun borrowed from French, where it is the same word, and it reaches back to Latin "lacuna," meaning a pool, hollow or pit. That Latin sense is the key to the modern one: a gap in a manuscript or a missing link in an argument is pictured as a hollow where something should be filled. The word is a doublet of two English words you probably know better. "Lacuna" came into English directly from Latin, while "lacune" arrived through French, so the same ancestor produced two forms that developed separately. The third relative is "lagoon," which came into English from Italian "laguna," a body of still water, and which descends from the same Latin root. A pool, a hollow and a gap in a text all grow from one image of a space that is empty.