Word of the Day:

February 24, 2023

hiatus

noun hye-AY-tus

What it Means

In general contexts, hiatus usually refers to a period of time when something, such as an activity or program, is suspended. In biology, hiatus refers to a gap or passage in an anatomical part or organ, and in linguistics, it denotes the occurrence of two vowel sounds without pause or intervening consonantal sound.

// The band has been on hiatus for three years, but is returning to live performance this summer.

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Hiatus in Context

“With the release of The Mandalorian season 3 just over six weeks away, after a two-year hiatus, Lucasfilm dropped a new trailer on Monday, giving us a glimpse of what’s next in the adventures of Din Djarin and Grogu.” — Oli Welsh, Polygon.com, 16 Jan. 2023

More example sentences

Did You Know?

This brief hiatus in your day is brought to you by, well, hiatus. While the word now most often refers to a temporary pause, hiatus originally referred to a physical opening in something, such as the mouth of a cave, or, as the 18th century British novelist Laurence Sterne would have it, a sartorial gap: in the wildly experimental novel Tristram Shandy, Sterne wrote of “the hiatus in Phutatorius’s breeches.” Hiatus comes from the Latin verb hiare, meaning “to open wide,” which makes it a distant relation of both yawn and chasm. And that’s all we have for now—you may resume your regular activities.