{"id":1684,"date":"2022-02-27T16:26:40","date_gmt":"2022-02-27T21:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/?p=1684"},"modified":"2022-02-27T16:31:03","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T21:31:03","slug":"word-of-the-week-hiatus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2022\/02\/27\/word-of-the-week-hiatus\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Week! Hiatus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2022\/02\/hiatus.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1685\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/files\/2022\/02\/hiatus.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2112\" height=\"1738\" \/><\/a>If you wonder where this blog has been, it&#8217;s been stuck in my head while I lay in bed with COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>Folks, you don&#8217;t want to get it. Really. My recovery to full strength is going to take weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, the hiatus.<\/p>\n<p>And what is this odd-sounding word?\u00a0 And why don&#8217;t we have other words in the language that sound like it?<\/p>\n<p>The etymology proves straightforward enough. As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oed.com\/view\/Entry\/86656?redirectedFrom=hiatus&amp;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The OED has it charted out<\/a>, we have a Latin loan-word. Scholars of the language, please send me other homonyms that came across intact.<\/p>\n<p>As for meaning, it&#8217;s a gap. The order of definitions surprises me, as I&#8217;ve thought of the gap in chronological terms, as in &#8220;between her two terms as mayor, she enjoyed a ten-year hiatus from local politics while leading a local law firm.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The first definition given, however, involves a break in a material object, as with a hole in a wall. Sounds very odd to say &#8220;we crept through the hiatus in the old wall.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But there it is. If you have other loan-words from Latin that rhyme with this one, send them, as with other words and metaphors of note, to me by e-mail (jessid -at- richmond -dot- edu) or leaving a comment below.<\/p>\n<p>See all of our Metaphors of the Month\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/metaphor-of-the-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>\u00a0and Words of the Week\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/tag\/word-of-the-week\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Hole in wall courtesy of <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Hole_in_wall_2.jpg\">Wikipedia<\/a>. It looks like how I feel.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you wonder where this blog has been, it&#8217;s been stuck in my head while I lay in bed with COVID-19. Folks, you don&#8217;t want to get it. Really. My recovery to full strength is going to take weeks. Thus, the hiatus. And what is this odd-sounding word?\u00a0 And why don&#8217;t we have other words &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/2022\/02\/27\/word-of-the-week-hiatus\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Word of the Week! Hiatus<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":589,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2516,87406,2520,40197],"tags":[2522],"class_list":["post-1684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-writing","category-loan-word","category-usage","category-vocabulary","tag-word-of-the-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcsCNV-ra","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/589"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1684"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1689,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions\/1689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}