gap
Pluralgaps
Pluralgaps
- 1
- 2A deficiency, shortfall, or absence: a lack of something where completeness or sufficiency is expected.
The audit revealed a serious gap in the company's finances.
There is a wide gap between supply and demand for housing.
Similarshortfall, deficit, hole, disparity, imbalance
Oppositesurplus
Note
Lack pictured as empty space: what should be present and is not. Such a gap is left or filled. A departure leaves a gap in the workforce, and a language exercise asks you to fill the gaps in a sentence. The Economist in 2013 called one 'the yawning gap' in neuroscientists' understanding, an apt adjective for a word that goes back to the Norse word for gaping.
- 3An opening created in something by breaking it or pulling it apart.
A gap appeared in the dam after the floodwaters rose.
Workers found a gap where the old pipe had cracked open.
Similarbreach, hole, opening, crack, break
Note
The sense closest to the word's roots: Middle English gap came from Old Norse gap, 'an empty space, chasm', itself from gapa, 'to gape'. An opening made by breaking or parting is a thing gaping where it should be whole, and English gape is a cousin. Old English had its own ġeap, 'open space', but the modern word descends through the Norse line.
- 4
- 5A hiatus or break that interrupts something otherwise continuous, such as a recording or a sequence of events.
Listeners noticed a sudden gap in the live broadcast.
A gap in her employment history prompted several questions.
Similarbreak, pause, hiatus, interruption
- 6An opening that reveals a breach or defect: a weakness or flaw in something expected to be sound or complete.
Auditors identified a serious gap in the firm's safety procedures.
A gap in the regulations let the practice continue for years.
Similarloophole, flaw, weakness, hole, deficiency
- 7
- 8
- 9In baseball, the area of the outfield between two outfielders, where a batted ball can fall safely or roll for extra bases.
He drove a line drive into the gap in right-center field.
The outfielders shaded over to cover the gap against a pull hitter.
Similaralley
Note
Baseball talk for the open grass between two outfielders, where a hard-hit ball can get past both of them. Hitters double through the gap or drive the ball into it, and the two gaps are left-center and right-center. A ball in the gap usually means extra bases, which is why outfielders shift to cover it.
- 10The disparity between indigenous and non-indigenous communities in life expectancy, education, health, and similar measures.
New funding aims to close the gap in indigenous education.
Recent reports show the gap in life expectancy remains stubbornly wide.
Similardisparity, divide, gulf, inequality
Note
In Australian public life the phrase needs no qualifier. The gap, usually written with the definite article, means the disparity between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians in health, schooling and life expectancy. The verb it attracts is close, as when policies aim to close the gap. Outside Australia, say what the gap lies between, or readers will not know which disparity you mean.
- 11The shortfall between what a medical insurer pays the provider and the scheduled fee for the item, left for the patient to cover.
Patients are often surprised by the gap on their specialist bills.
The clinic offered to waive the gap for the procedure.
Similarshortfall
Note
Australian health care has its own sense of the word: the gap is what the patient pays when the insurer covers less than the scheduled fee. The usual verb is pay, so a patient pays a gap. The word also anchors compounds such as gap fee and no-gap billing. Under bulk billing, as Willis, Reynolds and Keleher put it in 2008, the patient does not pay a gap at all.
- 12To fall or spill open in such a way as to leave an opening between the parts.
The curtains gap slightly where the panels fail to meet.
The wound gapped open after the stitches gave way.
Similargape, part, open, split
Note
Said of cloth, curtains and wounds that part of their own accord, and it pairs naturally with open: in Jeanne Stein's Blood Drive (2014) a robe gaps open at the waist. Unlike the verb for breaching, nothing does the opening here. The thing simply comes apart where its edges should meet.
- 13To check or measure the width of a gap between two parts.
Always gap the electrodes before fitting a new plug.
The technician gapped each spark plug to the maker's specification.
Note
A mechanic's verb whose object is the part, not the space: you gap a spark plug, setting the distance between its electrodes to the maker's figure. Gapping covers both checking and adjusting. Getting it wrong means plugs set too wide or too small, which is the risk of working from the wrong manual.
- 14
- 15To surpass someone or something by a wide margin, especially in a race or game.
The frontrunner gapped his rivals on the climb.
Top riders often gap on the technical descents.
Similaroutpace, outrun, outdistance, outstrip, drop
Note
Racing and gaming slang for leaving a rival far behind. It works with or without an object (he gapped the field; the leaders gapped on the climb). It is often passive with get, as in 'both of you get gapped by a slammed tiger tank'. Intensifiers like absolutely cling to it. The register is online chat and commentary; in formal writing, outpace says the same.
- 16A region within a sequence alignment that contains no aligned residue, shown as a break in the aligned sequence.
The alignment showed a gap of several bases between the two reads.
Researchers introduced a gap to bring the homologous regions into register.
Note
A geneticist's gap is deliberate. When two sequences are aligned, gap characters are inserted into one of them so that matching residues sit in the same columns. The gaps compensate for insertions or deletions. Researchers speak of introducing a gap, and the alignment is judged partly by how many it needs.
- 17To depart suddenly, often without warning.
They gapped the moment the police arrived.
We should gap before things get any worse.
Similarleave, split, bounce, bolt, scram
Oppositestay
Note
This is New Zealand slang, and it often takes an empty it as its object: they've just gapped it, meaning they cleared out before anyone could stop them. That it points at nothing in particular; it simply marks the getaway. The word belongs to casual speech, so in formal writing a plain verb such as flee or leave is the safer choice.
- 18A slang term for the vagina.
The comedian's crude bit about his ex's gap drew groans from the crowd.
He muttered something coarse about her gap as she passed.
Note
A crude euphemism that softens nothing: the slang use is coarse, and listeners hear it as an insult rather than a polite substitute. Avoid it outside the bluntest company. Because it trades on the plain 'opening' meaning, an innocent phrase can be heard this way. Choose words with care when the gap belongs to a woman.
- 19A sheltered stretch of coast lying between two cliffs, found mostly in place names.
The village fishermen kept their boats in the gap, sheltered from the open sea.
A steep track wound down to the gap where the chalk cliffs broke toward the beach.
Similarcove
Note
A Sussex word that now lives mostly on the map. Birling Gap is the familiar kind, a sheltered break in the cliffs where the coast comes down to a beach. As a common noun it is rare, so capitalize it as part of the place name. Outside Sussex, a reader will hear gap as the mountain-pass sense or as a plain opening.
- 20To stare or gape, often open-mouthed in surprise.
Crowds gap whenever something unusual rolls down Main Street.
The children gapped the clown's enormous shoes.
Similargape, stare, gawk, gawp, goggle
Note
Not the opening at all but a spelling of gape, US slang now dated. Chuck Connors' Bowery Life (1904) renders New York speech with it: 'stretchin' and gappin',' and then 'a gap and another stretch,' where the noun means a yawn. Use it only to evoke that period and voice; today gape is the word.
- 21Alternative form of gup.
Each gewog chooses its own gap to represent it in local matters.
The gap presided over the community meeting.
Note
Bhutanese administration gives the spelling a second life: gap is a variant of gup, the title of the elected head of a gewog, and it takes the ordinary plural gaps. The variant covers only that title. The other gup, Indian colloquial for gossip or blather, keeps its own spelling. In a Bhutanese district, then, a gap is a person, never an opening.
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Practice
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Origins
From Middle English gap, from Old Norse gap ("an empty space, gap, chasm"), from gapa ("to gape, scream"), going back to Proto-Germanic and a Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to open wide, gape." It is related to Danish gab and Old English ġeap, and compares with English gape.
A variant of gape.