Lacuna

For the Italian band, see Lacuna Coil.

A lacuna is a gap in a manuscript, inscription or text.

The word is Latin for hole or pit. The plural is lacunae. (The word lagoon referring to an empty space of water is cognate.)

The state of old manuscripts or inscriptions which have weathered or been damaged sometimes gives rise to lacunae – passages consisting of a word or words that are missing or illegible. In order to reconstruct the original text, the context is to be considered. In archaeology and literary criticism this may sometimes lead to competing reconstructions and consequent interpretations.

In translation, a lacuna is a lexical gap, a lack of one-to-one equivalence between the word, expression or turn of phrase in the source language and another word, expression or turn of phrase in the target language. This is a factor in untranslatability.

Law

In law, a lacuna arises when there is no previous authority directly dealing with the issue of the case at hand. As legislation is necessarily incomplete, judges therefore often have to resort to analogy to reach a judgment.

See also

• Lacunar amnesia