Lacuna

Research

A gap or missing section in a manuscript, argument, or body of knowledge; identifying a lacuna in the literature is a canonical move in a research proposal, establishing that existing scholarship has not yet answered the question the study asks.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster — lacuna merriam-webster.com accessed 17 September 2026

Merriam-Webster gives “a blank space or a missing part : gap; also : deficiency”, and separately an anatomical sense, “a small cavity, pit, or discontinuity in an anatomical structure”. The etymology is unexpectedly concrete: from Latin lacus, lake, modified to lacuna, a pit, gap or pool. First recorded 1652. Both plurals are current — lacunae and the anglicised lacunas — so neither is an error, which is worth knowing before correcting anyone.

Merriam-Webster is cited here as the dictionary of record. Where a lexicon entry defines a word rather than a position, a dictionary is the primary source for it — there is no other body with standing over what a word means. The reading of how the term is used in research writing, above, is this lexicon’s own.

Related terms

• Abbreviation
• Abstract
• Abstraction
• Academic Database
• Analysis
• Annotation

Rewritten from a truncated AJG archive entry, August 2026.