https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lacuna
"Dio seems to have described a massacre among the Romans,
but there is a lacuna in his text"

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lacuna
Exploring the etymology of lacuna involves taking a plunge into the pit-or
maybe a leap into the lacus (that's the Latin word for "lake"). Latin
speakers modified lacus into lacuna and used it to mean "pit," "cleft," or
"pool." English speakers borrowed the term in the 17th century. It is
usually pluralized as lacunae; however, lacunas is an accepted variant
plural. Another English word that traces its origin to lacuna is lagoon,
which came to us by way of Italian and French.

On 2022-08-01 02:13:37 +0000, Ken Blake said:

> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lacuna
> "Dio seems to have described a massacre among the Romans, but there is
> a lacuna in his text"
>
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lacuna
> Exploring the etymology of lacuna involves taking a plunge into the
> pit-or maybe a leap into the lacus (that's the Latin word for "lake").
> Latin speakers modified lacus into lacuna and used it to mean "pit,"
> "cleft," or "pool." English speakers borrowed the term in the 17th
> century. It is usually pluralized as lacunae; however, lacunas is an
> accepted variant plural. Another English word that traces its origin to
> lacuna is lagoon, which came to us by way of Italian and French.

Can someone who remembers their Latin tell me if there are masculine
nouns of the first declension apart from "agricola"? I ask because
there is an editor at Wikipedia who goes by the name Agricolae. I'm
wondering if the choice of a word that looks feminine but is actually
masculine is accidental, and if putting it in the plural is a hint that
their pronouns are they, them, their.

--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

On 8/1/2022 3:59 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
> Ken Blake said:

>> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lacuna "Dio seems to
>> have described a massacre among the Romans, but there is a lacuna
>> in his text"

>> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lacuna Exploring the
>> etymology of lacuna involves taking a plunge into the pit-or maybe
>> a leap into the lacus (that's the Latin word for "lake"). Latin
>> speakers modified lacus into lacuna and used it to mean "pit,"
>> "cleft," or "pool." English speakers borrowed the term in the 17th
>> century. It is usually pluralized as lacunae; however, lacunas is
>> an accepted variant plural. Another English word that traces its
>> origin to lacuna is lagoon, which came to us by way of Italian and
>> French.

> Can someone who remembers their Latin tell me if there are masculine
> nouns of the first declension apart from "agricola"? I ask because
> there is an editor at Wikipedia who goes by the name Agricolae. I'm
> wondering if the choice of a word that looks feminine but is actually
> masculine is accidental, and if putting it in the plural is a hint
> that their pronouns are they, them, their.

Nauta, poeta (not sure about Sappho; maybe she was a Muse), and some
proper names. Beyond that, memory fails.

On 2022-08-01 11:23:06 +0000, CDB said:

> On 8/1/2022 3:59 AM, Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote:
>> Ken Blake said:
>
>>> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lacuna "Dio seems to
>>> have described a massacre among the Romans, but there is a lacuna
>>> in his text"
>
>>> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lacuna Exploring the
>>> etymology of lacuna involves taking a plunge into the pit-or maybe
>>> a leap into the lacus (that's the Latin word for "lake"). Latin
>>> speakers modified lacus into lacuna and used it to mean "pit," "cleft,"
>>> or "pool." English speakers borrowed the term in the 17th
>>> century. It is usually pluralized as lacunae; however, lacunas is
>>> an accepted variant plural. Another English word that traces its
>>> origin to lacuna is lagoon, which came to us by way of Italian and
>>> French.
>
>> Can someone who remembers their Latin tell me if there are masculine
>> nouns of the first declension apart from "agricola"? I ask because
>> there is an editor at Wikipedia who goes by the name Agricolae. I'm
>> wondering if the choice of a word that looks feminine but is actually
>> masculine is accidental, and if putting it in the plural is a hint
>> that their pronouns are they, them, their.
>
> Nauta, poeta (not sure about Sappho; maybe she was a Muse), and some
> proper names. Beyond that, memory fails.

Yes, after posting I did a search and found that agricola, poeta and
nauta were the only well known ones, but there were some obscure ones
as well.

--
Athel -- French and British, living mainly in England until 1987.

On Mon, 1 Aug 2022 09:59:16 +0200, Athel Cornish-Bowden
<acornish@imm.cnrs.fr> wrote:

>Can someone who remembers their Latin tell me if there are masculine
>nouns of the first declension apart from "agricola"?

I remember very little Latin, but a web search quickly found

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Latin_masculine_nouns_in_the_first_declension

This is another related usage of "lacuna" to indicate a physical, yet
perhaps accidental, removal of written content.

https://www.livius.org/sources/content/cassius-dio/cassius-dio-on-the-teutoburg-forest/
[56.22.2] Every man, therefore, and every horse was cut down without fear
of resistance, and the [lacuna]

On Mon, 1 Aug 2022, at 14:57:56, Ken Blake posted:
>This is another related usage of "lacuna" to indicate a physical, yet
>perhaps accidental, removal of written content.
>
>https://www.livius.org/sources/content/cassius-dio/cassius-dio-on-the-te
>utoburg-forest/
>[56.22.2] Every man, therefore, and every horse was cut down without fear
>of resistance, and the [lacuna]

A lacuna is also a gap, a lack of something, even an oversight, in a law
- possibly a poorly drafted law. A judge may point out a lacuna in the
law to be applied to the case before the court, so that the law doesn't
apply to this set of facts - when one might have expected it to apply
and the draftsman would have covered it if he'd thought of it.
--
Paul

On Thu, 4 Aug 2022 17:51:54 +0100, Paul Wolff wrote:

> A lacuna is also a gap, a lack of something, even an oversight, in a law
> - possibly a poorly drafted law. A judge may point out a lacuna in the
> law to be applied to the case before the court, so that the law doesn't
> apply to this set of facts - when one might have expected it to apply
> and the draftsman would have covered it if he'd thought of it.

I think you said it far better than I did, in that a lacuna appears to be a
"gap" in the record - more so than a "removal" of material in that record.

As I am wont to do (that usage always gets me as it seems inherently to
naturally want the "want" and not the "wont"), I have been asking people
around me about lacuna and most of them knew what a lacuna was out of hand.

It's just me, I guess, for whom the word usage was new.